On Thu, 6 Nov 2003 21:28:20 -0000, "S.Boardman"
wrote:


Yippeee :-) When I changed it to 166, the DRAM changed to HCLK
automatically. At boot it now says DRAM clock 333 XP 2500+.

[If I wanted to overclock it, do I up the FSB or the ratio bit or both? I'm
not planning to do it right yet, since I still have the northbridge h/s (it
still requires a push from a cold start :-( and I want to change the RAID
from 0 to 1 - my next task).]
Thanks for your help. The hd/fan did fit, and I did have to take the m/b
out - but I got it all back in again :-).

I'd go ahead and put a drop of oil in the northbridge fan NOW, rather
than waiting, even if you do replace it later... it might run for a
long time with the drop of oil but wear out completely if you keep
running it 'dry'.

It's hard to speculate exactly how far you can push that motherboard
and your PC2700 memory, so be cautious when raising the FSB speed...
it's the larger performance increase but also will subject you to
possibility of various things like memory errors, HDD corruption, and
USB ports, LAN, etc, malfunctioning after a certain point. I would
GUESS you should have no problems raising FSB at least to 172MHz, but
you'll have to do a lot of stability testing to go much higher, and I
wouldn't go higher until you have the HDD(s) backed up. Any
signficant FSB or memory timing changes should be followed up by
several hours of testing with memtest86:
http://www.memtest86.com
If this is your first time running the memory at 166MHz, if it was at
133MHz synchronous speed setting with the previous CPU, I'd run
memtest86 now regardless, just to be as sure as possible that it's
functioning properly.

The multiplier is the safter, easier way to increase CPU speed, though
your particular CPU will dictate how high it can go at default
voltage, though you may have BIOS settings or jumpers to change
voltage as well. I'd expect it can at least run at 12.5X multiplier,
though it might require a slight voltage increase. Just keep in mind
that "overdoing" it, if you raise the speed too high you may need to
clear the CMOS, then reenter any bios settings that were changed from
the defaults.


Dave