Need guidance and a brain boost...

[Sheep]

well more or less anyway.

Well first of all, I´m pretty new to the OC thing. The only experience I´ve had is when i clocked my 200Mhz PMMX to 225Mhz ( cool, right? = )

The next computer i got was through my moms job and i werent allowed to experiment with it ( what she doesnt know wont hurt her ).

But know i finally got some cash over (studying = no cash) and have ordered some stuff to get an at least not to horribly slow comp.

My new system specs will be like this:
850Mhz T-bird
GlobalWin FOP32-1
2x128Mb cas3 PC133 (amd ok) SDRAM
Abit KT7A motherboard
20,1 Gb Fujitsu 5400 rpm ATA66 (the old disk)
TNT-1 !! 16Mb ( this is really lame, i know )
2x80mm temperature reglated chassi fans
300 watt powersupply

I´ve been reading for the past 3 days all that i can find about overklocking and the limits of my system. Before this i was a complete newbie (as i still am, but not as bad as before)

as far as i can tell the first thing i should check is if i have a blue or green core. If its green i can go and shoot myself. and if its blue just turn up the voltage and have the time of my life.

the average OC of a 850 was 1016 Mhz according to this page. But now comes my first question to those who know and have tried this. How much is it reasonable for me to hope on. (blue / green -chip ?)

Probably this cpu will be locked. Is it ok as many says to use an ordinary pencil to unlock this monster?

oh and my monsterous graphic card then. The powerful TNT-1 =) with a faschinating 16Mb of ram.

i dont know what brand it is. And therfore maybe this question is impossible to answer. How do i clock it? and how much can i clock it?

I´d be thankful for all replies, even the dumb ones, ^^

[Eriksson]

Well you are not screwed at all, even though you get a green core Tbird, you can overclock it all the same, perhaps you can expect a little higher oc from a blue one, but remember that all Durons got alu interconnections like the green Tbird, and many D have been clocked quite high.

I recomment the RAID version from Abit, the extra two ATA100 connectors are good and the RAID controller is a pure bonus. This is real life performance question, since you dont have to have all your cd/r/rw/dvd/hdds on the same two ide lines. And should you ever get another hdd you can set up raid array to. For few $ more there is no question about this.

I would get better quality ram, at least cas2 pc133 or better. The wings of your bird are hidden in in the fsb clock speed, unless your memory is fast it may never get off the ground to fly.

[Sheep]

ok, well, for me its a to big difference in price between the raid and the regular KT7A. even if it would have been pleasant with the raid version. as far as the ram is concerned its hard to find cheap cas2 memory here in sweden. So once again I´ll have to stick with the cas3. Btw can i do anything to speed up the cas3 memory?

and the 850 T-bird, is there any settings that you reccomend? (multiple and fsb) I´d like to run it at 1 Ghz, just for the status thing. =)

oh and the graphics card, it was a Diamond card. dont remember what name they called their TNT-1 16Mb cards. but maybe some of you do.

thanks for the help anyway.

[Eriksson]

Best situation is to run the fsb clock as high as possible, with the highest multiplier :) You should get your Abit up to 140mhz fsb, even higher. Your memory might run all the way up to 150 mhz with cas3 if you are lucky.

Just some $0,02: I vould rater switch to a Duron and get the RIAD version. Modern comps benefit a lot from the extra two ide lines..And unless you just got one hdd and cdrom I vould consider.

[Sheep]

ok, I´ll think about that. but at the moment i have just one hd and one cd. =)

with Abits card i can clock the memory and fsb via the bios. or am i wrong?

[Eriksson]

You got it right, you can clock everything in your Bios

[Rob Cork]

To overclock your TNT card you'll have to use the Detonator series drivers from Nvidia - http://www.3dchipset.com has all the beta det drivers, I think the 5.xx series work best for the TNT chipsets. Then you need to download and install the coolbits reg edit, to allow you to change the core and memory frequencies for your graphics card - get it from http://www.cotty.btinternet.co.uk/files.htm (coolbits for Win98)

[Sheep]

Ok, thanks!

Do you have any suggestions on what i should set it on?
Or is it the hard way thats waiting for me; =)

anyway, thanks

[Rob Cork]

I don't know what the default clock speeds for a TNT are, but just raise the core frequency and memory frequency about 5MHz at a time until you begin to get artifacting in games (I run 3Dmark2000 a couple of times after ocing my GF DDR to look for corrupted textures etc). It would be a good idea to replace the stock hsf on the chip (if it has one - dunno about the TNT chipset) - you can epoxy bolts to the card if you need to bolt on a larger heatsink. Ramsinks can also help when ocing the memory - just see how high you can take it first before adding extra heatsinks. Putting a big fan in the side of your case blowing air over the PCI slots should also help keep the card nice and cool - good luck ocing it :-)

[Sheep]

ok i had detonator 3-650 just download. and run the coolbit for win98

but where do i change the core speed etc.

[Sheep]

oh sorry, i just found it

the default core speed is 95 Mhz and the memory is 112 Mhz

well, i´ll try to boost it up a little

[Shep]

Don't worry about getting a green core tbird. My green 850 on a kt7-raid that runs stable at 1100 @ 2.04 volts and at 40C with a fop38

[Sheep]

thats nice to hear. =)

oh, btw, i have a question. I am a little bit confused about the voltage thing. I assume that it has nothing to do with the Mhz calculations. But rather with the ability to reach them. Of course a 1Ghz T-bird recuires more power than an 800Mhz. But what does it mean for the speed if i boost the voltage up from 1,75 to 2 ?

does it only give a helping hand to the multiple*bus or does it in fact raise the speed of the computer?

oh by the way, should i invest in artic silver? I´ve read that it gives another 2 to 7 degrees in advantage. But does that really give such extra speed that its worth it. Or is it more for the durability of the system?

I´m asking this cause I have already ordered my parts but i skipped/missed the thermal paste, and I´m now woundering if I should order in some artic too. It would cost me around 20$ !

is it really worth it?

[Rob Cork]

You could make do with some generic thermal paste - the arctic silver will lower temps, but probably not by enough to oc any more. It's only really worth it for the sake of getting the lowest temps - and that's pretty important to people here, there's kinda a bit of friendly competition to get lower temps than everyone else. Hence so many people use arctic silver. The voltage does only help with stability - bear in mind that raising the voltage creates more heat, and while many people are now running 2V+ with volt mods, you need some good cooling (top-quality aircooling, preferably watercooling).