Hi All,

I've had my AMD 1.4GHz box chugging away for a few years now and have always assumed that everything was as it should be. Today, I was bored and playing around so I cat /proc/cpuinfo and to my surprise there was this line:
cpu MHz : 1060.471

What the heck? My first thought was that I was scammed but after reading this thread ( http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...=cpuinfo+wrong ) I'm assuming that it's just a setting I need to correct.
Not being a hardware guy, I don't know which settings to adjust or to what I should set them. The other option is that it really is a 1060MHz processor and I've been under a false impression for a few years! (I'll be checking the latter when I can get home to physically check the box)

I'm a little miffed either way right now and will appreciate any suggestions you can give me for adjusting the settings.

Thanks.
J.

Get your motherboard manual out and look at the bios chapters.

I use Abit boards almost exclusively and the BIOS allows you to increase chip speed in (IIRC) 50 Mhz amounts. (my boards tend to err on the side of caution when you install a cpu, selecting a safe speed which you then increase).

Like the guys in the other thread said, check your BIOS version (will be on the screen when the machine first boots up - hit scroll-lock to keep it there while you write it down) against the latest BIOS release on the manufacturers website.

The manufacturer will (should) have information on how to flash the bios etc.

When / if you do start to increase the processor clock, increase in 50Mhz amounts and make sure it boots ok at that speed, rather than whacking it up 400Mhz in one go.

You should also keep in mind that an AMD Athlon 1400+ does _not_ run at 1.4GHz. The 1400+ is a performance rating rather than a clock speed rating.

the running CPU speed is the chip multiplier times the front side bus (FSB). my guess is that your motherboard defaulted to 100Mhz FSB, which x a 10.5 multiplier = 1050, or 1060 (b/c the mobo reading is probably fluctuating a little -- mine fluctuates from 2241 to 2243 right before my eyes in gkrellm).

if you raise the FSB in the bios to where i'm guessing it probably should be (133Mhz), that will be 133 x 10.5 = 1396.5, or rounded off, 1.4GHz. coincidence? i think not.

reboot and press the delete key as soon as the computer starts the boot sequence to get into the BIOS, then search around for the 100Mhz and change it to 133 (or more if your mobo has that option and you are feeling brave ). (my 1.4GHz XP goes easily to 1.9GHz ) if you can't do it from the BIOS, you might have to change a jumper on the motherboard. just look in the manual or on the manufacturer's website for which one to change. gl

Thanks for the good info folks. I haven't played much with the BIOS on this machine 'cause it's always worked so well. On previous machines (back in the day) I did all my overclocking directly on the board with jumpers... I'll have to take a look as to how they do that in this decade. ;-)

Anyway, the mobo is an Asus A7M266 which claims it has a 266MHz FSB but isn't that twice the speed of the actual bus? (hence 133 as guessed above).... I'll have to pull off the case to see what the actual chip is in there 'cause I can't find the docs and need to reboot my machine. Dang'it. I guess my uptime will have to remain at only 47 days.

Done. It worked. Much appreciated!

I'm a little pissed that it took me this long to find out.

live and learn. glad you got it, though -- just think of all that extra cpu power you're going to have now. almost 50 percent more (or is that 25%?) anyway, you should notice quite a difference in starting apps and compiling and whatnot.