DS3- can't modify multipliers on pentium D?

Northwind · 20 Dec 2006 at 02:32

Going to sneak two questions in here. The first is that my DS3 doesn't offer the option of modifying the CPU multiplier, which I've seen on other people's screenshots. I'm wondering if this is a feature that's not supported for Pentium Ds, or if there's something else going on here. It's on the F7 BIOS, made no difference...

And the other question... Could be I'm being a tool here, so bear with me. The 820 has a stock multiplier of 14 at 200mhz, 2.8ghz. I'm running it at 14 and 250mhz, 3500. Solid as a rock, a touch warm but not too bad, just noisy. But, if I could drop the modifier, that'd raise the FSB and allow faster RAM clocks- beneficial? Or not. I expect it would be, but that's not the most informed opinion

Ooh, OK, wait... A third question. The DS3 allows me to seperate memory and processor clocks, but I know you usually make sure they're multiples, ie 250/500... As it happens I have pretty rubbish RAM in this thing, a gig of Dell/Samsung DDR2 4000 and a half gig of DDR2 3200. So it's quite happy at 500mhz. I'd be astonished if it'll do 750. But I know it'll do 533, and probably higher. What's the implications of having them not be a direct multiple?

Corasik · 20 Dec 2006 at 20:00

Only intel Extreme Edition processors officially allow multipler changes, although some clever motherboards have managed to trick Conroes to change their multipliers, but its not a 100% success rate even then.

Northwind · 20 Dec 2006 at 20:50

Aaaaah. Did not know that. Thanks very much.

stoofa · 21 Dec 2006 at 12:21

Actually the motherboard manufacturers would like you to think they have been clever and are offering you this feature - when it was something built into the Conroe CPU itself and the newer BIOS revisions are now just using that feature.
Basically a lot of motherboards allow you to reduce the multiplyer on a Conroe CPU.
You still cannot take your Conroe CPU (unless it is the unlocked Extreme Edition) above the multiplyer it was sold as - this is still hard locked during the manufacturing process.

If you Google around you can find the information - even those few sites that say you can increase the multiplyer note that nobody has ever successfully done it!