1. Do you have the latest BIOS for the motherboard?

2. Try disabling speedstep and other power saving features in the BIOS.

Sounds like it is sticking at the lowest possible multiplier of 6, which is why you are only getting 1.2Ghz. Either that or the bus speed is sticking at 100Mhz instead of 200Mhz. Check the BIOS for a bus speed setting as well.

i have the latest bios version, unfortunately the bios is very limited and speedstep isn't an option

start cpu-z, switch to bench, click Stress CPU, switch back to CPU and check MHz again

No luck with cpuz, still staying at 1.2ghz. This is really annoying! Maybe the board is faulty, otherwise it makes no sense

Edwin1996 wrote:

i have the latest bios version, unfortunately the bios is very limited and speedstep isn't an option

With either of those cpus there should be a bios option for Enhanced SpeedStep (EIST) - try that

There is no option for eist sadly. This is the most basic bios i have ever seen. If i cant get this going i guess ill have to buy another board, any good cheap recommendations?

try ThrottleStop

Are you 100% sure that there are no bent pins in the CPU socket?

That's the only other thing that I can think of that would cause it to not run at a higher multiplier.

I am looking through the manual on Gigabyte's site and it says there is a C1E and an EIST option in the Advanced Bios Features menu - Page 33
http://download1.gigabyte.us/Files/Manual/mot … 8vm800pmc_e.pdf

What RAM are you using?

Those options in the manual dont seem to appear in my bios. Under the "advanced bios features" tab the options I have are:

Init display first
VGA share memory
Hard Disk Boot priority
First boot device
second boot device
third boot device
Password check
Limit CPUID max. to 3 (Disabled)
No-Execute memory protect

Strange that is listed in the manual but not actually in the bios. Im using 2gb of ddr2 (2 1gb sticks), however ive also tried 256mb of ddr1 (board takes both). ill take it apart and see if there are any bent pins

Weird... did you flash the BIOS with the one from Gigabyte? Maybe your board was in some OEM machine and they had a special locked down version of it.

And even if the one from Gigabyte is also locked down for some strange reason, it should be possible to mod that BIOS to unlock the missing settings.

I advice to flash the latest bios from gigabyte website (if you didn't already it's not clear from your messages) after that go inside the bios and press ctrl+f1 on gigabyte's mb it usually unlocks some hidden options it may do the trick.

Thank you so much! ctrl+f1 allowed me to change the multiplier from x6 to x12! CPU is now running at 2.4ghz. Thanks to everyone for your responses!