BIOS settings vsw CPU performance!?

2 motherboards, 5 processors, same problem. What tool are you using to alter the bios settings?
What sort of settings do you need to change?
Also look elsewhere: Has anything (e.g. power supply) not changed? As you've swapped boards it can't be a 'pure' bios problem.
Check under Me's task manager and see if a cpu hog process is running.

Reading between the lines, are you trying to "overclock" the CPU?

The Slot A Athlon CPUs require hardware modifications in order to overclock them. They were hardware "locked" at the factory.

Search for "overclock" with your favorite search engine for information on the hardware modifications required to allow overclocking the Slot A CPU.

If you are referring to other settings in the BIOS, generally, the defaults are the best settings for the memory and CPU options.

Settings that Iadjust to improve performance include:
Disable unused drive channels (speeds up boot)
Disable floppy drive seek
Set boot sequence to HDD first
Set AGP apperature to 2X memory on card - 1/2 system RAM.

Disable unused ports (comm, IR, AMR)
If you have the VIA chipset, you can set RAM clock to 133MHz if you have PC133 RAM.
Set power management as desired.

Beyond the above, defaults work best most of the time.

Chas

Okay Ralph,

At what point does the low CPU performance come up?
Is this a warning that pops up in the BIOS?
Is it from a benchmarking tool?
Or, does system performance not meet your expectations?

I have assembled numerous Slot A and Socket A systems with out getting an error such as you are seeing. Except, when I installed T-Bird CPU's in boards that do not support the T-Bird.
In both a VIA chipset, and a mixed chipset board, an 850 MHZ T-Bird ran "crappy" compared to a 500MHz "classic".

I have no experiance with your specific motherboards though.

I will attest that the VIA chipset boards have "better" performance than the AMD chipset boards for Slot A.

The only further advice I have, is to set the CPU clock and multiplier settings manually. There may be a bug in the BIOS that is mis-setting the clock when you change BIOS settings.

Chas