I need a few opinions/advice

[Josh42]

I just successfully overclocked my Athlon 650 to 748. That's 115x6.5 @ 1.95V. I don't have any additional cooling except for what came with my case(1 fan, 1ps fan) and the fan/heatsink that came with my CPU. As of right now it's running at about 93ºF and isn't hot to the touch. However, my Voodoo3 is getting a little hot. I touched the heatsink (no fan) and felt discomfort after about three seconds. Is my video card going to be a problem here? Also, I noticed that many other Athlon 650 owners got there's much faster than mine at a lower voltage setting. Does this simply mean that my chip isn't as good and there's nothing I can do about it??? I appreciate any advice or comments because this is my first OCing experience. Thanks you!

- Josh C.

[Fink]

Is your althlon a Slot A or a Socket A processor? If it is a Slot A, then you should realisticly get 700-750MHz with a golden finger device, a 115 Mhz FSB overclock on this processor is very good. If you have a socket A processor, then have a look around this website for the pencil trick to unlocking the clock multiplier. In both cases you will have much greater success with a multiplier overclock...

As to the 115MHz FSB, it adds stress to the APG port by increasing the clock frequency across the bus. This could convievably cause your card to overheat. I believe that the Voodoo3 ran very hot at stock speeds, so yours might not be out of the norm yet. Clock the FSB back to 100Mhz and see how hot your voodoo3 is.

[Josh42]

It's a Slot A, .18 micron process CPU. How much does that gold finger device cost and how easy is it to install? Do you think it would be easier to buy the goldfinger and raise the multiplier OR, would it be easier to just buy a couple fans and put those in instead??? What is more cost effective? Thank you!