Is my bios underclocking my cpu?

I have searched google for a situation like mine but haven't come up with much so I thought I should ask.

I know this is an old system but I would like it to run properly (at least stock). For a long time MSI's Core Center has read that my cpu was running at 1005 Mhz. I figured that Core Center was wrong because it is a buggy PoS. So I never thought much about it. Recently I've needed some extra power and decided to run CPU-Z and it also says that I'm running at 1005 Mhz. I thought that maybe cool 'n quiet was throttling down my cpu when not under a load (even though I disabled it), so I ran Prime95 to test it and CPU-Z said that it never got above 1005.

Here's what I've got:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice s939 (should be 1.8Ghz)
MSI K8N Neo4 Mobo

FSB = 200
DDR = Corsair VS 512x2 PC3200 200mhz

My bios CPU ratio (multiplier) is set to "startup" which I can only assume is 5x since 200x5 is approx. my 1005 Mhz. Is "startup" supposed to adjust automatically? What is it's purpose?

My max setting allowed in the bios is 9. This should give me the 1.8Ghz I'm looking for, right? I plan to overclock (a little) in the near future but for now I would at least like "stock" speed.

Since I have no experience with clocking my cpu I thought I would make sure that I'm not going to burn it up. This is our HTPC and my wife would flip out if we lost dvr functionality and I had to spend even more $$ on it.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

yea that is kinda strange, typically with that chip and with cool n quiet enabled, you would be seeing an "idle" speed and a "load speed. When the pc is sitting there doing very little work it would clock down to a set speed and sit there to save power, cooling, and noise. When you start doing doing more cpu intensive workloads it would go back up to the full 1.8ghz.

The fact that yours isnt changing at all would lead me to believe its a bios setting with the board. Startup is typically a setting that allows the board to choose the "optimal" setting, and in your case I would assume that means the core center deal would likely be trying to decide that for ya. Your chip should be using a 9x multiplier, as 200x9=1800mhz, which is the rated speed for your chip. Manually setting that to 9x should solve your problem, but I am not sure how (or if) it will effect cool n quiet settings, if you intend to use that. To be honest I've only ever messed with that thing once on the 939 chips, and that was with a Athlon64 3200 venice, which is currently running at 800mhz idle, and 2ghz at load. Its worked rather well for that server, but as it is a datadump all it really does is sit there 90% of the time until I need to access data or stream a movie to my tv.

Even at 1.8ghz it should be a perfectly capable dvr, though if you plan on doing HD or utilizing multiple tuners you may wanna consider upgrading that to a 939 dual core. Even a X2 3800 (dual core 1.8) would suffice. But really, I dont think that the 1.8ghz chip is gunna give you any trouble for typical PVR duty. Running at its current 1ghz speed is a bit of an issue, but your about to increase it to 1.8, which is a pretty strong increase. If you were to overclock it, 2.4ghz is a pretty likely goal to reach, beyond that and other factors are gunna come into play.To reach 2.4 really all you need to do would be to knock the memory down to DDR333 ratio, then increase your FSB to 267, 267x9=2403, and your memory would be running at the DDR400 speeds so your likely to retain the memory stability.

hope that helps.

Thanks alot Stang. I didn't figure it would be a problem resetting the multiplier but wanted to make sure. I will try your overclock suggestion in the near future. Thanks again.