PIII overclocking

["Timothy Morris" <mail@xxxxxxx>]

Not strictly relevant to the list, but I thought I'd share.

I decided last week that it is about time I upgraded my aging(!) PII 300
system with something a bit more up to date. I spent some time researching
this on the net mostly at tomshardware and anandtech. The fastest PIII
chipset available at the moment is Intel's i840. The problem with it is it
needs expensive RAMbus memory chips to take advantage of the speed. I came
across plenty of favourable reviews of the Via Appolo 133A chipset, and the
ASUS board designed around this chipset. In fact in real world use with
133MHz DIMMS it is very close in performance terms to the i840.

As PIII processors with speeds around 800MHz plus are espensive at the
moment, I decided to look into overclocking. After a number of searches
together with a few newsgroup posts I decided on the following:

Intel PIII600E (6x100 system bus, rather than the EB which is 4.5x133)
ASUS P3V4X + Slocket adapter (I couldn't get a slot 1 CPU, only a
flip-chip)
128Mb PC133 SDRAM

Cost £342+VAT from DABS

If I had put together the same system using a PIII 800:

£644+VAT



I'm currently running the system at 840MHz (6x140) with the case open.
Using
the standard heatsink and fan the CPU temp averages at 55 degrees (well
within Intel's specs), while running a burn-in test for 24 hours at 100%
CPU
utilisation. I've ordered the mother of all heatsinks (an Alpha PEP-66 from
www.coolerguys.com)	which should allow me to get speeds up into the region
of 900MHz, and put the sides back on the case.

One of the great things about this chipset, is that all the speed settings
are performed in the bios, rather than using jumpers, so it really is quick
and easy to test it at different speeds. ASUS also seem to on the ball
regarding bios updates.

I'd be happy to provide more detail if anyone cares.

Tim.


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