correct cpu/dram bios settings for : soyo dragon p4s/p4 2.0A/pc3200?

[Guest_imported]

please bear with me if i appear as rather ignorant or asking the wrong questions, but would be so grateful if you gurus out here can help a hardware-challenged person! (i'm trying to learn - honest

a friend recently made some recommendations to upgrading my pentium III, and upon his advice, i ended up with a pentium IV 2.0A GHz (northwood w 512 cache), a soyo dragon p4s dragon ultra, and a single corsair 512MB PC3200 CAS2.5 DDR memory.

he was kind enough to help me put together the components, but had to go out of town before firing up the assembled system.

i ended up trying to make sense of how to configure the bios (with help from a less knowledgeable friend), and we are about to start the pc up, but have some doubts about whether we have set up the cpu & memory bus speeds in the bios correctly...

1) the soyo manual states that up to PC2700 memory can be used - the PC3200 module i have installed apparently doesn't cause any problems in the machine booting up though, much to my relief - should i assume then that this "faster" PC3200 memory is backwardly compatible with the soyo, even if i may not be able to take advantage of its higher potential speed?

2) i'm still very confused about all these different clock speed parameters even after all my reading and research - i've seen the northwood quoted as having a 400MHz bus, and the PC3200 as being 400MHz also, but there's no setting in the bios for this speed?

3) in short, what's the optimum bios settings that would take advantage of the northwood cpu and PC3200, without overclocking (i'll save that for later when i get more educated and daring , while retaining stability at the same time:

a) normal or fast or turbo?
b) cpu clock fsb set as 100 or 133 or ?
c) ratio set at 1:1 or 4:5 or ?
d) dram freq set as 100 or 133 or 166?

sorry if this is rather long-winded or if i'm confused, please help this incompetent soul out!

thanks mucho,
e aka newbie

 

[dumdum]

1. Your ram is backward compatible. The increased rating of your ram will allow higher overclocks to the mem portion of the FSB

2. Your FSB is really 100mhz. The cpu runs (quad pumped), thus the 400mhz FSB. It should be set to that speed by default. When booting does it give you the correct speed of you cpu? If so, you're cool for now. The 133 setting is for PIII's

3. A) Your mem should be able to handle the turbo settings. But keep in mind that you must have your CAS set to the proper setting. B) 100. C) not sure d) this depends on your ram. what is the fsb rating for it?

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