Can I overclock?

[Ramseur]

I am very much new!

I have a classic Athlon (I think!!) @ 700 mHz: Abit KA7 KX 133 Chipset: 256Mb Ram.

Can this be overclocked?
Any help would be appreciated.

Ramseur

[mjc]

You'd probably be able to find out more info someplace liketrish's (http://www.hardwarehell.com/) links to everywhere...or searching for overclocking info on Google (http://www.google.com/). We aren't much into OCing around here, but you may find little help...

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/highrise/11/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[hiredgoonz]

If you have the cartridge Athlon, you can either overclock by adjusting the front side bus (which can lead to system instability) or by using a device nicknamed "goldfinger" which allows you to adjust the speed, if you do a search for it, I'm sure you'll find it...

Of course if you're REALLY good with a soldering iron, you can also increase the speed by changing around settings on the Athlon pcb board...both the goldfinger and solder method (which I strongly recommend you NOT try) require cracking open the cpu cartridge and with that comes the risk of destroying the cpu (and definitely voiding any warranty you have)

So my opinion is that it's not really worth it...unless you have absolutely no use for the chip and a strong desire to do things that may break it...

Some good articles on the topic:
http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/99q4/991113/index.html
http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/99q3/990826/index.html

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When all else fails, read the instructions.

[Vic 970]

Have under-clocked my previous puter!

after a couple of years use my Cyrix PR 233 based puter went down, and for about 3 months interested parties tried to 'repair' it. most gave it up as scrap, but not this forum, with their help it is now perfick again.

after reading about others over-clocking & getting problems, I deduced that the CPU was getting 'tired/worn/whatever' & tried under-clocking it to PR 205 & that did the trick. there was little apparent difference in performance other than some very large progs.

Moral is.., over-clocking is liable to give problems for little (if any) benefit. Perhaps many may dissagree, but I would suggest leave it alone unless..,
1/ you know exactly what your doing
2/ you are going to achieve something worthwhile
3/ you can replace any components that you blow up (can't get bits
for my old one)

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for every question there's an answer. Then a load more questions.

Regards..,
Vic.

[hiredgoonz]

I really don't recommend you do any of the things outlined in the articles I gave the links for, but I wanted to answer your question...

Vic provides 3 very good caveats at the end of his post, unless you got all 3 covered, I wouldn't try to overclock that particular processor except by adjusting the fsb, mildly...

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When all else fails, read the instructions.

[AwARe]

Never fails to amaze me,

When Im running 450's and 600's (That I think are plenty fast enough, and theres alot of big time gamers in this house), and people ask if they can OC a 700 or even worse if they can OC their 1ghz CPU........

Very Funny http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif.....and thats my take on the whole issue

Maybe they all have crappy video cards?.......who knows..... heh

EDIT: Let me add a little something to this for anyone that stumbles here......
Was not all that long ago, about the fastest CPU you really needed to do Anything was a 300.....
Lately its been more like 450-600mhz to keep up.....
Point is......if you're running faster then a 600-700 CPU and it seems too slow, before you take a chance on starting a fire lmao, think about the posibilty that your Video Card or your MoBo is a POS, or maybe you need a little bit more Ram, or maybe a good defrag is in order, or also maybe you just have too much BS running in the background, or a slow HDD, etc etc etc............

If it makes you feel "Kewl", then just lie and tell people its a 3ghz P6 haha........ OC'n is sometimes useful, but is incredibly OverDone by people who dont know how and even worse dont know why......unless there is a Specific program that "Wont run at all", or in some cases a little laggy and youre trying to get the lag out, OC'n just for the sake of doing it is pretty much a waste, and not really a very good idea........

Msg heard from an "old time/big time" OC'r, that realized one day......Whats the point?

Starting fires just for fun (and well yes it can be alot fun at times, to see just how fast you can get something to run heh), is not really all that smart!

Another thing thats a bit odd, is people that try to get 6 gazillion fps in Q3 or whatever...........The human eye can only see something like 30 fps, so if without OC'n you get 45, well thats OK, and if you get 60, you're pretty much never gonna see a frame drop in a game ever due to the video being too slow..........so hammering on your hardware to get those amazing fps is well, Im sure point made..........

Just because your friends are doing it, doesnt mean that you have to, or even should for that matter............

About the only practical use I can think of for "needing" anything over a 700 (There may be a few more), is to capture live video at amazingly high compression ratios.....and I doubt most of the people looking to OC are doing it for this reason....and there arent many capture cards that can do it anyways.........

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What I meant by what I said is hopefully less confusing then the contemplation of the question that led to the confusion in the 1st place.......

[This message has been edited by AwARe (edited 06-24-2001).]

[hiredgoonz]

Another good point...

I read an article somewhere about a test to see if people could tell the difference between a 600mhz 800mhz and 1ghz system...the only thing they changed was the chip...

They had a bunch of testers run games, office apps, etc. and nobody could tell the difference between the 3 speeds...it's been said before, but "Word is only going to open so fast"

And you see these almost 200fps benchmarks in different games that aren't really doing anybody any good...

But sometimes people just want to experiment and it's hard to tell them , "Don't bother, it's really not worth it"

It's tough to learn from someone else's mistakes...there are some things you gotta try and see for yourself, especially when there are alot of other people talking about oc'ing, like it's the best thing since sliced bread...

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When all else fails, read the instructions.