Hi, I'm new, so forgive me if I ask obvious questions.

I've just built a system on ASUS P5K Premium and installed WinXP and then looked at my BIOS (ver. 0404)

I have 2x1GB Crucial Ballistix PC-8500 DDR2 1066MHz RAM but the bios only sees it as 800MHz PC-6400 - first problem...

Now, I've only got an E2160 @ 1.8GHz, which I planned to OC until I can afford a better CPU.
It has a fsb of 800MHz. Would this be a reason for my bios to only see my ram as PC-6400 (same 800MHz freq.)?

The manual for my Mobo says "If you install a DDR2-1066 memory module, make sure that you set the DRAM Frequency item in BIOS to [DDR2-1066MHz]" So I went to change the DRAM Frequency, but the frequencies in the menu only went upto ... 800MHz. I wondered why the manual would tell me to make a setting that wasn't available and I thought it might be because my RAM isn't supported by the bios.

The manual mentions support for a model: 1024MB Crucial 5-5-5 DS BL12864AA1005 but my RAM is: BL12864AA1065 and so I thought that a bios update might make the board recognize my RAM as 1066MHz.

So, I "upgraded" my bios to version 0504 and now when I boot into windows I get a New Hardware Found wizard looking for drivers for a PCI device, which it can't find.
And the bios still sees my RAM as 800MHz and doesn't show any option for increasing the DRAM Frequency beyond this.

1) Is it normal for my RAM to show up as 800MHz with this processor?
2) Why can't I increase the DRAM frequency when ASUS says to in the manual?
3) What could the PCI device be? (I thought it might be my x-fi soundcard but I inserted the driver CD and that wasn't the solution)

Please help, if anybody has any suggestions about ANY of my problems

Hi,
I've sorted out the Unknown PCI device - formatted and reinstalled XP...

Then, as I was formatting the drive, I suddenly realized it was probably this: after flashing the bios, the onboard audio which I had disabled had now become enabled and was showing up as new hardware. But it still doesn't explain why windows couldn't find the drivers for it from the ASUS drivers CD.

Also, I got a reply from ASUS support - they say that the memory is defaulting to 800MHz to match the FSB of my CPU synchronously, and that if I want to run the RAM at higher frequencies I could increase the FSB of the CPU.

This is what I thought, and is what I'm going to try.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what would be a reasonable FSB for this CPU and RAM?

Would 266MHz run the RAM at 1066? I've never OC'ed before, and I'm not sure I've got the maths right.

Any advice would be appreciated

Have you tried the Asus forums?

that should do it. however, you could probably try to set your ram divider to something other than 1:1. this way, you don't have to oc your cpu to increase the ram speed. your bios should have this option.