Does anyone here know about settings for a P4M800-M7A board?

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This used Systemax I just got has a Biostar P4M800-M7A board, and this is the first I have ever dealt with anything like it. I have searched far-and-wide for BIOS settings, but I have yet to find anything telling me about certain speed and power settings. I have tried the "Optimized" button, but the result just does not feel right ... and I have since learned even Biostar says that is not best.

Any help?!

Much appreciated!

What options does it have, that you are wondering about?

Here is a beginning, and there are plenty more following these.
(Reports) are in parenthesis here, and _Options are in [brackets].

Advance BIOS
Limit CPUID MaxVal [enable / disable]
Execute Disable Bit [enable / disable]
MPS Version Control For OS [1.1 / 1.4]

Advanced Chipset
(Current FSB Frequency 133)
(Current DRAM Frequency 200)
_DRAM Clock [By SPD / 100 / 133 / 166 / 200]
_DRAM Timing [Manual / Auto By SPD / Turbo / Ultra]
(SDRAM CAS Latency 2.5)
(Bank Interleave Disabled)
(Precharge to Active(Trp) 4T)
(Active to Precharge(Tras) 07T)
(Active to CMD(Trcd) 4T)
(REF to ACT/REF (Trfc) 25T)
(ACT(0) to ACT(1) (TRRD) 3T)
_Read to Precharge (Trtp) [2T / 3T]
_Write to Read CMD (Twtr) [1T / 2T]
_Write Recovery Time (Twr) [2T / 3T / 4T / 5T)
_DRAM Command Rate [2T Command / 1T Command]
_RDSait Mode [Manual / Auto]
(RDSait Selection 03)

This deals with temperatures. Its used for operating systems older than windows xp. Disable it for anything modern as the system will govern the cpu.

This one allows the system to sandbox areas of memory to prevent the propagation of viruses and whatnot. Enable it.

Set it to 1.4. It deals with instruction sets for PCI and 1.1 is designed for older operating systems.



Front side bus speed.

this refers to the voltage applied to the quartz timing chip in the memory. more voltage = bigger frequency and thus faster ram. and more errors.

and this is where you set it. If its at 200, leave it there.

I would set it to auto and after the system is happy(a few days of no crashes), go back and try the turbo. If its still happy after a few days, move up to ultra if you want.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 763,00.asp explains it better than I could.



I'll come back to this stuff

I thank you very much!

That "frequency" thing had caught my eye when I posted. It makes sense to set it at the same "200" being reported as current.

Being an all-or-nothing kind of thinker, I had not thought about taking a little time to step up to Turbo or Ultra!

My new drives did not arrive yesterday, so they will almost certainly be here today ... and having taken the day off from work, I will be right here waiting for them at the door!

... and those might be the last of my questions. I just took what you already wrote and went through my BIOS setups, and I think I am okay with everything but the above. I just discovered the "Optimize" button only does one page at a time, so I was able to go through everything without having to try to think of or remember everything all at once.

To get my tasty experi-"Mint" started, I am in the process of formatting a drive with two partitions and installing my W2k in the first so I can do the Mint download into a folder in that same partition with thoughts of installing Mint in partition 2 ...

Does that make sense?

Another question:

In every machine I have had before this one, the "Reset Configuration Data" feature gets turned off the next time around ... but this one stays on unless I go back in and disable it. Logic tells me to just leave it enabled until my drive installations are final so the internal BIOS crew can work efficiently during changes ...??

in this case it is a delay to write to memory. Therefore, 3 is slower and safer than 2.

This seems to be the opposite and is a delay in reading memory. again, larger is safer.

The pause that refreshes? Its a rest period between writes.

and it should be becomeing obvious that all of these are similar.

set it to auto. It is seemingly the most obscure unexplained thing ever on a motherboard, but it has to do with timing.


Me being me, I would set them slow as possible. do the install(s) and then later go ramp them up in speed, one at a time, testing for a few days at each step. The differences are going to be very minor, but since you are making mint cake, you might as well add sprinkles later, eh?

Yes, it's there for Windows NT but it has nothing to do with temperature. CPUID is the command the CPU used to identify the features it supported and NT can't handle the extended info later CPU returns.


Unless you want to overclock your RAM you should choose Auto or By SPD.


This is about the only option not related to overclock. Except for some extremely old DIMMs, it should be safe to select 4 banks or enabled. If you are using IGP, keep it at disabled.


If you overclock your RAM, I highly recommended you stress test it with something like MemTest86. Most linux boot disc also have the option to run a similar program.


It sounds more like a bug to me. There's no reason to reset it on every boot.


I think RDSait deals with signal drive strength. You really shouldn't mess with it.

Okay, I think we are good-to-go!

I leaned toward "safe", but left 4T as it was ... and 98se is now on its way into my first partition. My mouse is stuck in the middle of the screen and not working for some reason, but I can deal with that later. Maybe I just grabbed a bad one to get going. I have my usual keyboard and switch busy elsewhere at the moment ... and 98se finished its first pass while I was typing these last two sentences.

Gotta go for a bit ...! !

ty