Duron and A7V

[hydrata]

ok, i am very very new to the cpu overclocking scene, so some nice spelled out how would be greatly appreciated. I have a Duron 600 and an Asus A7V, both purchased in august of 2000. I don't think AMD locked the durons yet at this time, but i'm not sure if mine is locked or unlocked, and i don't feel comforatble prying off the heatsink/fan to find out unless i have to. I'd like to get the chip running at about 800, i'm not as daring as you guys with the 900-1ghz marks, but kudos to you guys for trying it. anyway, instructions on how to overclock my duron would be most appreciated, it has dipswitches on the board that i messed around with some, but the chip still shows up as 600 mhz when it boots. I guess i didn't turn off jumper free properly, so hlep please :) thanks

[FRANK]

I've got two DURON 600's, and have had them both on an A7V motherboard with very good results.

First of all, remember that like all other first generation socket A motherboards, the A7V has the KT133 chipset that generally doesn't support FSB much above the 107 / 110 MHz range. This was remedied with the introduction of the KT133A chipset on the A7V133.

That being said, I can tell you that you should be able to get to at least 1G possibly making it to 1.1G with air cooling.

In a nut shell what worked for me;

Make sure that you have adequate cooling, I used a Global Win FOP32 with good results although I've upgraded to the WBK38 since. I had to increase the Vcore to the boards maximum of 1.85. Make sure that you use good quality PC133 or better RAM. My first DURON was also purchased in August of last year, the code is AKBA and it appears that this is one of the best cores for overclocking. This CPU was locked and I had to close the L1's. I've used both the pencil and the rear window defogger kit with no problems with either. My settings on the A7V are multiplier, 10X and the FSB is 110MHz, yielding 1100MHz air cooled with no issues.

I had similar results with the second 600 I have. Both of these CPU's will perform similarly and reach comparable speeds on either the A7V or the A7V133 maxing out at or just above 1.1G, although I can reach a higher FSB on the A7V133. These CPU's performed just as well on other manufacturers motherboards such as the FIC AD11.

One issue that bears mentioning is the ASUS Probe monitoring program that comes with your board. It has been reported that the ASUS Probe shows temperatures as much as 10C higher than actual. I've tried to keep mine in the mid 50's or lower as reported by the Probe.

If you do remove the hsf (and I would think you will), be very careful when reinstalling it. Take your time reseating it and make sure that you don't tilt it as you fasten the clip or you'll risk damaging a very good CPU.

If you follow the accept overclocking procedures, you should have a successful overclocking experience coming up.

Good Luck!

Research, the key to a successful overclocking experience!

[BIG-O-2]

hydrata (Aug 03, 2001 11:15 p.m.):
ok, i am very very new to the cpu overclocking scene, so some nice spelled out how would be greatly appreciated. I have a Duron 600 and an Asus A7V, both purchased in august of 2000. I don't think AMD locked the durons yet at this time, but i'm not sure if mine is locked or unlocked, and i don't feel comforatble prying off the heatsink/fan to find out unless i have to. I'd like to get the chip running at about 800, i'm not as daring as you guys with the 900-1ghz marks, but kudos to you guys for trying it. anyway, instructions on how to overclock my duron would be most appreciated, it has dipswitches on the board that i messed around with some, but the chip still shows up as 600 mhz when it boots. I guess i didn't turn off jumper free properly, so hlep please :) thanks

Do you have the book that came with the A7V MotherBoard? If so then you need to read the part about Front Side Bus and Multiplyer Fequency. I have the same board I have a 700 and it is running at 1000 the only problem I have seen is the lan card I have does not like speed. I am playing around with setting now to get a good mix but I had it as high as 1050 today not lock ups. Just freaky slow net card....I guess i should buy one all the ones I have had were given to me for free. I think I know why now. Well if you are ready to dive in go to http://www.tomshardware.com/
That is where I found the most about the A7V's potential. I have had this MoBo for about 9 months and just decided it was time to kick it up. I run at temps of 40C - 70C with stock heat sink fan, trust me get a good HSF. It is the most critical part of Over Clocking your CPU. I wish you luck........

Welcome to the forum......???

[wild_andy_c]

To see if the chip is locked - look at it and locate the 'lil bridges on top of the CPU. Look at the L1 bridges and see if they are broken or joined. If broken the chip is locked. If unbroken (complete gold lines) it is unlocked.

As stated - don't just flick the dip switches in any old fashion - read the section of the manual that details exactly what to do.

[ken257]

When overclocking the A7V make sure that the board is not set for jumper free mode. I have had the best luck configuring the jumpers and switches manualy with this board.

My board maxed out at a fos of 105. It would run as high as 112 with aditional cooling on the chipset but was not 0 stable. Don't expect to OC to much by fsb if it turns out that your chip is locked. If you want to find out without taking off the hsf put the board in manual configuration and try to bump up th multipier. If it works and your cpu runs at a higher speed then it is unlocked, if it still comes up as 600mhz then you will have to connect the L1 bridges to enable multiplier control. I highly recomend the rear window defogger kit. The one I use is made by loctite. So far all of the cpu's I have ever this to are still working fine and a few of them have been over a year now. I am sure you have heard of the pencil trick but many have complained that it can "wear off" and need to be redone from time to time thats why I recomend the defogger kit instead.

[!-=sky=-!]

what revision is your a7v board?
i noticed some rev 1.05 boards can do 133 fsb like mine....i did not cool the northbridge(only used the one that came with the board-->green small heatsink)

[hydrata]

ok, maybe i should start clarifying. i read the manual and the part about setting it to manual mode. part of my question was did i set it to manual mode correctly? i moved the blue plastic thing on the JEN's and set it to 1-2 like the manual says. but the manual also has something about Vid4, Vid3...down to Vid1, and i didn't know what to do with these. I also flipped the dipswitches to what the motherboard manual shows as the manual CPU settings at 700mhz. the bios still posted it as 600mhz on bootup, so does that mean my duron is locked? or did i just not set it to manual mode correctly? I have 128 megs of PC133 RAM from corsair, so i'm not worried about that. Where can i find one of those rear defrogger kits, and how do they work? The only thing i know of is the pencil trick, but if the rear defrogger kit is better, then i'll go with that, as long as it's not huge and bulky. What HS/F combo do you guys recommend? I don't want to have to spend a ton of money on one, if there's a good one in the 15-25$ (U.S.) range, that would be great. and for the revision, in the manuals it says "Manual Revision: 1.02 E590 Release Date: August 2000" i don't know what to really make of that, but i've read other posts where you guys talk about the revision, so i assume you guys know what that means....thank you for the help, let's crank this bad boy up!

[Eil Atan]

hmm... well, first of all, those blue thingys, those are called jumpers, just so you know... welcome to the forums by the way... anyway, I think your Duron probably is locked... the pencil trick worked fine for me, I don't know if you want to go to all the trouble to do the defogger stuff, as it is a lot more hassle... you might want to pencil the bridges temporarily for the time being... those vid1, vid2, vid3 jumpers are for setting the core voltage i believe... you might not want to start changing those quite yet, and make sure you check the manual so you know you are running at the right voltage... I think the normal/safe one is 1.79 volts...

I think a great Heatsink for you would be something like the FOP-38 from GlobalWin... I use a FOP 32-1 on my Duron system here, and it is working quite well, but then again I'm not pushing it that hard, so the more you want to clock your chip, the better HSF you're going to need... I think the FOP32-1 should be fine, and the FOP38 ideal...

hope this helps you somewhat... I'm not an overclocking master (far from one, in fact) but hopefully I've answered a couple of your questions...

good luck! :-)

[hydrata]

ok, you guys are a great help, but let me keep adding to this post. another option i'm considering is just going out and buying a 1ghz t'bird w/ the 200mhz fsb, that way i could just start over witht the overclocking. i'm kind of nervous about pulling off my current HSF combo, because i've never done it before. but if that's what it takes. in the A7V manual, does the grey color mean that those pins should be covered by the blue plastic things? (sorry for my lack of terminology) is there a good place you guys know of where i can find an easy to comprehend article on how to do this? sorry, i need things spelled out. or if you guys could lay it out step by step here, even better for my lazy self :) does the pencil have to be pure lead or anything like that? and where can i find that HSF you recommended. sorry that i'm still blabbing on.