Hello,

I have recently put together a box with an EPoX K5A2+ motherboard and an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (T-bred) CPU with a 333 MHz FSB. According to the cpu support chart downloaded from EPoX, this board and CPU are compatible. Unfortunately, the CPU is being recognized as an Athlon XP 2000+ and not a 2600+.

Here is the relevent portion of the dmesg boot output:

Linux version 2.4.22 (root@trooper) (gcc version 3.2.3) #10 Thu Nov 27 21:29:47
CET 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000000fff0000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000fff0000 - 000000000fff3000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 000000000fff3000 - 0000000010000000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
255MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 65520
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 61424 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=305 hdc=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
Found and enabled local APIC!
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1670.487 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 3335.78 BogoMIPS
Memory: 256800k/262080k available (1249k kernel code, 4892k reserved, 448k data,
116k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU: After generic, caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+ stepping 01
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
enabled ExtINT on CPU#0
ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
calibrating APIC timer ...
..... CPU clock speed is 1670.3734 MHz.
..... host bus clock speed is 267.2598 MHz.
cpu: 0, clocks: 2672598, slice: 1336299
CPU0<T0:2672592,T1:1336288,D:5,S:1336299,C:2672598>
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel


I have updated the BIOS using the 5A2P3916.BIN update found on the EPoX site, but that has not helped. (My assumption is that BIOS updates are cumulative, and the most current will have the Athlon support added in Sept. '02.) Can someone pass me a clue as to what I should be looking at next? Although I have been using linux for some time now, I am not very experienced with motherboard/cpu/BIOS settings. The answer could be as simple as "Set the FSB in the BIOS to 333 MHz" (it is set at 133 MHz now in the BIOS), but I would hesitate to try that on my own because I am not sure if there are "multipliers" or other settings involved.

If I need to send you any other information, let me know.

TIA,

SOLVED

The default BIOS settings for CPU Clock and CPU Ratio for an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ on an EPoX 8K5A2+ mother board are 166 and 12.5 (AUTO), repectively.

While searching for this answer, I found a forum such as this at www.amdforums.com that specializes on EPoX boards. That's where I was given these settings, and they work for me.