I need PC help.....BAD

[Dgo]

Ok here it is i got me a quite nice pc built about 1 week ago. Its pretty powerful i have a 120 hard drive 256 radeon video card amd sempron processor (2800) and a gigabyte mother board,and the problem is that my processor isn't giving me full power i'm only getting 1.20 when i paid for 2.8 which sucks cause thats less then half. Also on a side note i had help building this beauty.
I asked him to help fix this problem but he works and i work so we can't really catch each other to slove this problem. Now i thought it was the processor or morther board but he assured me it was not and that some settings had to be changed to get my full power. Basicly i'm hopping someone here has enough PC knowledge to help solve this probelm come on psoworlders i need help on this one dont let me down.
Sunday is my deadline cause if i can't get it working i'm taking the processor or mother board back. Cause i had 14 day to return them and that is the last day to do so.......

[digigram]

what speed memory is it?

my wife has a sempron processor. it's FSB (front side bus) speed is 333mhz.

Your memory speed has to be equal to that of your CPU's FSB speed. 166/333

go into bios at startup by pushing DELETE. Find the memory clock speed (usually defaults at 100 or 133), change it to 166.

Though, if it isn't automatically doing this for you, it's more than likely you have the wrong speed Memory. It has nothing to do with your processor, well, it does, but your processor isn't broken. None of it is. It's most likely you have the wrong memory.





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: digigram on 2005-06-02 15:36 ]</font>

[Arislan]

For one: An AMD's "displayed" processing power will never be that of it's true power. The reason AMD chips have "2600+" written on the box is that it's an estimated speed. They actually run slower than that, but due to some engineering feats, are capable of the same "speed" of the listed Intel equivalent.

Two: Sounds like the processor is running slightly underclocked. Check your motherboard manual, make sure the jumpers on the board are set correctly, and/or use the BIOS jumper settings (without a board model, can't say if you have a software or hardware solution). That *should* take care of your problem. Essentially, CPU multiplier x Bus speed = Processor Speed. Should be running at 2ghz normally, so if you can control those two settings, FSB should be 333, CPU multiplier should be 6.

Also, check your memory speed in BIOS, should be running at 166 (and make sure your RAM is capable of running at that speed as well, check the memory's package for that info).

[digigram]

My wife has a sempron 2800, it should be running at 2ghz. not 1.2ghz.

The 2800 in my wifes and my spare Athlon Xp1800 both would run at 1-1.2ghz when settings hadn't been set correctly. Her old MB defaults at 333, so if your system is fairly new, I'd assume the jumpers are already set for 333 FSB.

her system currently is only running at around 1-1.2ghz because we had to use the memory from her Xp1800 that died (and why we bought the sempron2800),

Athlon xp1800 = 266 fsb, which only needed 133 memory.
Sempron2800 = 333 FSB, which when used with 133 memory, clocks it to be recognized as "AMD Athlon 1 GHZ" at startup in bios.