Question for the Athlon overclocking folks...

[TheWobble]

How did Yall overclock your athlons??
did you have to solder anything on it?
did you use any programs??

I have T-bird 800
on FIC SD11 board.

what do i need to do?
what is the SAFEST OC speed I should try for?

[MrBill]

 http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1282&p=1
 http://overclockers.com/  

Follow destructions exactly, don't attempt to shortcut.
You wont know how fast you can get till you step it up. different parts will OC to different speeds.

Have fun  

------------------
OhNooo
smile awhile

[This message has been edited by MrBill (edited 03-16-2001).]

[Sky Viper]

Personal View on OC:  Why bother?  There is to much to lose and not enough to gain. Especially these days.
If I want a faster chip, I should buy one. But then, I'm still running my K6-2 400 at its stock settings.  

That said, here is a good write up: tomshardware.com

I like tomshardware...decent reviews, good advice, and no evidence of being influenced by manufacturers.

You may also have a look over at  http://www.amdzone.com

------------------
Sky Viper

[Lephturn]

I have found the older slot Athlons too much of a PITA to mess with.

However, if you have a new Thunderbird and one of the new KT133a chipset mainboards, you can OC them with almost no effort by boosting the FSB speed.  If you want to go further, you can also do the bridging trick and change the multiplier, but I don't bother with that one.

I always buy good quality heatsink/fan units for good cooling.  If I can get more performance from my machine by changing a BIOS setting, I'll do it.  If it doesn't work, it's no big deal.  Generally I'm willing to invest an hour or so mucking with the BIOS settings to find the stable sweet spot for a machine.  It's free speed.  

------------------
Sean "Lephturn" Conrad - Aces High Chief Trainer

A proud member of the mighty Flying Pigs
http://www.flyingpigs.com

Check out Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH articles and training info!

[TheWobble]

Thanks folks, keep em coming.

[MrSiD]

The best way to approach overclocking is to take the option into notice when buying components for the system.

There are huge differences between motherboards in terms of overclocking..

It's possible that the mobo you have is some el cheapo stock board that does not support any kind of bios tweaking.. Dip switches and soldering things do not sound user friendly do they?

Tomshardware is a good place to read, variety of tips can be found from www.hardocp.com  (humoristic approach) so I suggest you read up on it.

Asus and Abit boards are the best choices for tweaking, although you CAN find very tweakable boards from Epox, AOpen, Iwill etc.

Read a lot of reviews and you'll soon find out which are the options for you.

[bloom25]

Wobble, is it a slot or socket Athlon?  That makes a BIG difference.



------------------
bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Animal]

 

Personal View on OC: Why bother? There is to much to lose and not enough to gain. Especially these days.
If I want a faster chip, I should buy one. But then, I'm still running my K6-2 400 at its stock settings.  (Image removed from quote.)

Why Bother? Well, when I bought this Duron 700Mhz for less than $90, did the multiplier trick, and overclocked it to 1GHz STABLE, I sure didnt bother to put it back to its default settings. Its been running like that since the 700mhz duron was released, I never get lock ups, and I get almost the same performance as a 1Ghz Thunderbird, for less than $90.



[This message has been edited by Animal (edited 03-16-2001).]

[Fatty]

I OC'd my Athlon from 750 to 866 by increasing FSB on an older kx133 board, and it still never runs hotter than 96F with no extra cooling.  On the other hand, I'm likely to buy a new CPU way before I get around to cracking the CPU case open and manually setting the true overclock, even though I've no doubt it could handle a good bit more.

[TheWobble]

Its a Slot A

EDIT: None of the web pages im being sent to realy tell ya much, the first thing they say is to do the solderting trick...Im not too keen on trying that, also they never mention my type of MOBO, my FIC SD11 can handle over 1Ghz processor, but in the CMOS i cannot find any settings to adjust anything  

[This message has been edited by TheWobble (edited 03-16-2001).]

[bloom25]

If it's slot A, then without cracking open the case all you can do is up the FSB.  It will be set at 100 Mhz by default.  You could probably raise it 3 Mhz 100% safely.  If it's an 800, it would then be an 824.  You will need good RAM to do higher, but 850 wouldn't be a big deal.

Your MB may not allow you to change the FSB though.  



------------------
bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Fatty]

Look for something like Voltage/frequency in the bios setup.  I went to their sight (http://www.fica.com/) to see if they had a manual to peek at, but the one they have on FTP is a bad file.

[MrSiD]

That's exactly what I meant by having el-cheapo non-overclockable board.

Trash it and get a good one..

AMD oc does not require soldering anything, you can short the needed bridges by a simple pencil.

If you look closer, you will find a HUGE amount of articles on AMD overclocking.

[TheWobble]

 

AMD oc does not require soldering anything, you can short the needed bridges by a simple pencil.

only the socket Athlon (Duron)
the T-bird is slot A and cannot be plowed with that way..at least not easy enough to be worth the risk of screwing it up.

[MrSiD]

 http://www.athlonoc.com/unlocking.htm