Ok i'll give that a go.

Ok, I tried both saving and exiting, and also resetting settings and saving and exiting. My processor is still running at 1248MHz

Athlons are a little different in their Frequency Designations....

http://www.cpu-world.com/info/id/AMD...html#Athlon_XP

An "XP 2800" is actually 2083mhz depending on FSB + L2 cache... WHY ?? I have no clue... but I'd read about this before. Their chips are favored by most of the "gaming chatrooms" I've visited -- due to some esoteric advantages over Intel products for video processing. Including price. Why it would show 1250 -- I have no clue/

I think-- in this case-- that you either have to move a jumper, or maybe reset a RAM stick (make sure they're firmly seated in the MOBO)

...that MOBO has 4 different settings for FSB-- if it's set too low --you won't get everything from the chip. When you installed the new board-- did U check the jumper settings ??

I didn't check the jumper settings. I just presumed the motherboard would pick up the processor and it's speed automatically. I'm somewhat of a novice at building computers.

Oh --I'm no ace, either. It seems to me, though, that when these things are controlled by jumpers-- they are ususally set at the lowest setting at the factory... so it would be worth a look.

Ok, how or what exactly do i need to look for? And how do i set the jumpers? I'm sorry for asking for details, it's just that getting it wrong wouldn't be such a good idea.