Rate My Overclocking Potential

I already know I probably have no potential but here goes.

I've got an Athlon XP 1800+ but unfortunately it's a Palomino core which I've read is the absolute worst for overclocking. So how does it work? Whenever you by a Athlon CPU its like a wild card you don't know what you'll get from the box or what? I bought it last year or something it was on sell at Fry's with the Epox 8kha+ mobo for 70 dollars or something.

And by the way, is that Epox 8kha+ any good? Somehow I doubt it. It only accepts DDR 1600 or DDR 2100 ram and actually all I've got is 1 stick of 256 Samsung DDR 2100. And it only runs at 133 mhz on this board. I've got a pretty good GeForce 4 ti 4600 I wonder if this mobo is even doing it justice.

So Palomino 1800+ Epox 8KHA+ Samsung 256MB DDR 2100.
I have a pretty good nonstandard heatsink with a puny fan I think it's pretty good but I'm at 45 degrees C without even overclocking so maybe its not.

I wanted to get my speed up to prepare for half life 2 and Doom III or something.

If what I've got is really crap, like I suspect. Maybe I should get a new CPU and MOBO? But then I'm worried it wouldn't work with my power supply/ antec case.

Assuming all my board ram processor is crap for overclocking do you guys think its worth it to upgrade?

Well there is no point in upgrading till we actually see how HL2's optimization go before final launch. I would like to upgrade myself but if you do upgrading during launchtime, then the hardware that is current right now will be better for your budget.

That Samsung should do 140FSB or even low 150s.

The best thing to do on the cheap is to at least get an unlocked T-Bred B. It's $49 or so:

1700+ & 1800+ (That's just the two of those, not higher rated CPUs) at this place:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductList.jsp?ThirdCategoryCode=010413
(click on 'next' at the bottom of the page.)

2100+ (that's just the 2100+, not lower rated CPUs) at newegg.com:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...343&manufactory=1028&DEPA=1&sortby=14&order=1

Be sure you get an nForce2 mobo if you decide to go for one. With PC2100 you'll need high multipliers and there are only two nForce2s that can do high multipliers without wire tricks on chips below 2100+ and those mobos are Abit and Soltek nForce2.

For games you'll need high FSB but it would only make sense if you got a PCI locked nForce2 mobo. If you did, get one of these for 220 FSB overclock which is more important for games than raw MHz:
http://www.memoryx.net/gn256pc3200.html

to how high does it overclock actually?

highest I got a 1800+ palomino to run stable at (when they just came out) was 1800Mhz. That was using a watercooled 226w peltier though.

so they don't overclock that good compared to TbredBs.

I'm only on air, and my processor isn't even heating up that much ( max around 50 degrees C) but I can't get much out of this chip. If I set FSB to 150 I can't even boot. The highest I can set FSB and have it working is 149 for a speed of about 1700 mhz 1.85 volts and for some reason my mobo won't let me change the voltage beyond +/- 1 But at 149 it's unstable and locks up every 3 hours or something so I'm currently running it at 146 for about 1646 mhz or something like that which is pitiful considering the default is 1533 that's only a little more than 100 mhz overclock hardly even worth it.

Well if you are itching to do some ocing and get some better performance I would agree with c627627. Get a 1700+ or 1800+ tbred B and an Abit NF7-S. Thats a nice motherboard, with alot of features and you don't have to do alot of volt mods to it if you want to push your chip pretty hard. Most importantly is the PCI and AGP locks which will protect your HD from corruption when you start to raise the fsb.

To get the most out of your system you will probably want to step up to some faster ram as well. PC3200 will let you get some nice FSB overclocks, which will impact your system's performance a great deal.

Do you happen to know what kind of power supply you have? You should not have any problems getting an atx power supply to work with whatever motherboard you would get BUT an elcheapo generic power supply won't hold up under heavy ocing.