Pentium 4 and Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra

[Eddy5]

Right I've been building PCs for some years, and recently I've been a big fan of AMD Athlon XP based systems. I have one myself and it was a joy to build and use as were the last 5 or 6. And they've all been based around Gigabyte boards because they're well specced, work solidly and are pretty fast.

I've been asked to build a Pentium 4 2GHz PC for my dad. So I got the following together

Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-8PE667 Ultra
Processor : Intel Pentium 4 2A GHz (Northwood I believe)
Memory : Crucial Tech PC2700 333MHz 256Mb x 2 (512 Mb in total)

My main question is how can I run the memory at 333MHz when the Processor has a locked 20x multiplier and with an FSB of 100MHz the memory will only go to a max of 266MHz. The motherboard is fully compatible with 333MHz memory. If I up the FSB to get 333MHz memory speed it locks up. I've tried a compromise at 300MHz, but still didn't trust it.

Are all P4 based systems this inflexible in that the memory speed is tied basically to the processor speed. So if I wanted to run 333MHz memory without overclocking the processor how would I do it?

Basically I'm really confused and could do with someone clearing up the whole 333MHz memory P4 thing for me.

BTW I'm on the latest BIOS and drivers etc and using WinXP Pro

 

[halkebul]

Hello. I don't know if the board has a AGP/PCI lock, but if it does, lock the AGP/PCI buses and give it another try. You should be able to hit 2.3GHz easy with the cpu vcore set to 1.55V.

<i>It's your world kid!!!</i>

 

[DrJeckyl]

Ok....first of all, yes it does have a pci/agp lock. Go to the frequency/voltage control section in the bios. You'll have to press ctrl+F1 of course to get the advanced features. Next, make sure you set the frequency control to manual. Once you do this, the agp/pci will lock automatically, unless you change the frequency of them also. Bump up the FSB little by little, and do the same with the voltage accordingly.
As the bul said, you should be able to reach 2.3ghz.
Another option you have is to change the settings to manual as I stated before. And instead of changing the settings in the bios, you can use easy tune to adjust the frequencies async. The computer will boot at default speed, and when windows starts, easy tune will automatically change the settings everytime you boot, if you so desire.

Great board!
Good luck...