Low bus speed on old motherboard

[Baralis]

I have a 10 year old pc that a couple months ago really started to slow down. I reinstalled the OS and drivers from the provided Dell restore disk set to clean out any unwanted programs that may be running but it did not seem to help.

Since I rarely use it for anything I just kinda left it until today. I thought perhaps it was overheating and throttling down even tho I keep my systems very clean inside and out. This pc is so old it does not have temp sensors for the motherboard or CPU so the only thing I can go by is cleanliness and running at rated speeds. The CPU was running at the correct speed. What I did notice was my bus speed was low.

Normal bus speed for this motherboard is 133 and it is showing a bus speed of 98.7. This Dell has a locked bios and I am unable to change any bus speed or FSB settings so I reset the bios by pulling the battery. No change in bus speed.

Is it simply an old dieing motherboard? Or could it be something else?

Thank you

 

[smorizio]

have you ever replaced the cmos battery??? on old mb if the battery is bad the mb info wont hold and the mb and cpu default back to stock. if it not the battery is may be the clock chip on the motherboard is going bad. see if there any free rtc (real time clock) testers still left out there.ami diags used to have it.