Overclocking my Athlon?

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JuiceEggsMcKenna

MC68060/50
Aug 31, 2000
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With modern motherboards it's all done through the BIOS setup program. Find the setting to increase the system bus speed and CPU core voltage.

To do multiplier overclocking you need to do "the carbon pencil trick".

What sort of mobo do you have?
 

JuiceEggsMcKenna

MC68060/50
Aug 31, 2000
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LOL. Oh well, just press Del during the early boot phase and get into setup then see if you can find those settings - bus speed and core voltage. If you locate those we can probably guide you further.

Where the hell did Xayd get to? :)
 

Zaphrod

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Sep 27, 2000
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If you dont know what motherboard you have I am assuming you bought a Retail computer like Gateway or Dell. If you did then overclocking is harder or impossable in most cases.

Because you have an Athlon You should still be able to do the Pencil trick but you may not have the correct setting in your bios to simply change the multiplier and the voltage.

Athlons overclock much better using the pencil trick and often have problems trying to up the FSB frequently fail at anything above about 117 even if the CPU can take it.

Check out www.overclockers.com for tips and techniques and links to other overclocking sites
 

Clayeth

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Apr 10, 2000
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As Zaphrod said, you're probably not going to be able to do much with that computer (I'd be willing to place a bet on a Dell, seems that's what EVERYONE has if it's a retail box). Just like MANY of the people here, I'll never buy a pre-built computer again, If you have the know-how building it yourself is the only way to go.
 

Necroth

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Mar 7, 2000
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AMD has put an o/c protection on the 1GhZ+ CPU's so forget o/c on these baby's without addition of o/c hardware for AMD CPU's :(
 

Stosh

A legend in his own mind
Feb 9, 2000
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DopeFish, Please be careful if you want to O/C

Overclocking should not be taken lightly. Extra Cooling is a MUST!. Most processors these days have locked multipliers. Which pretty much limits you to changing the FSB, (Front Side Bus). You really must have a MB that allows you to change certain things. Example, On my Abit BX6 2.0 with my Celeron 400 processor. I have a dual fan on the processor (Slot 1), a case fan, and a slot fan.

The multiplier is locked at 6. The default FSB is 66mhz. The AGP bus runs at 1 to 1 (66mhz) The PCI bus runs at a 1/2 divider (33mhz)

So 6 x 66mhz = 396 (a 400mhz processor)

Now if I upped my FSB from 66mhz to 100mhz = 600mhz processor 6 x 100mhz

I can run my AGP bus at 2/3 =66mhz
I can run my PCI bus at 1/3 =33mhz

The problem is that my processor wont run that fast...

I can run my FSB at 83mhz x 6 = 498 (500mhz)

Now if I run my AGP bus at 83mhz(1 to 1)..pretty far out of specs, (remember the default is 66mhz) or at 2/3 = 55mhz

I have been able to run it at 83mhz.. but it gets pretty hot.

The real problem I run into is the PCI bus. If the FSB is at 83mhz, I set the PCI bus at a 1/2 divider, 83/2= 41.5mhz
Again, pretty far out of specs since the default for the PCI bus is 33mhz. It did work, but caused some problems with my PCI NIC (Network Interface Card)

I settled for the following

FSB=75mhz x 6 = 450mhz
AGP at 1 to 1 ratio = 75mhz
PCI at 1/2 divider = 37.5 mhz

I did not have to boost the voltage to get my over clocking to work. Sometimes it is required, and sometimes the overclocking will NOT work, no matter what you do The problem you run into by boosting the voltage is that it causes more heat, and if your not careful, you can burn up your processor. Just ask Skumboy...

The point is that your motherboard has to allow you to make these changes, and you should give it some serious thought and quite a bit of research prior to any endeavor such as overclocking.







[Edited by Stosh on January 23rd, 2001 at 10:32 AM]
 

Kokensu

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Jan 4, 2000
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No offense dopemeister, but

1. Why the heck do you even NEED to overclock an Athlon. They're already fast as hell.

2. If you don't even know what kind of mobo you have you SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO OVERCLOCK...

Sorry, just don't want to see another dopefish thread reading...

"I just fried my brand new Athlon! what now??!"
 

namu

Bleh.
Dec 21, 2000
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[rant]
Kokensu: "...the athlon is already as fast as hell..." well have you ever heard of computers called "workstations"? They usually contain one or many processors that just toast any athlon, like POWER 3 or 4, Alpha 21264, UltraSparc 3, PA 8600...
they're about twice as fast as a GHz athlon while running at 300 to 700 MHz.
[/rant]
Sorry i had to let that out, it just drives me crazy seeing people ignore that the x86 architecture is the last reminiscence of the dying CISC world...
 

Boom

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Mar 28, 2000
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And if anyone is wondering why Dopefish wants more proc power all of a sudden, just read my sig. :D
 

The Dopefish

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Apr 17, 2000
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They're fast enough loading as it is Boom. :)

In reality, I've found a new niche: 3D graphics. My Radeon is useless to those programs, so I need a faster processor to get things done faster.