1.33 athlon running at 1.40+ couple of questions

Well I just put together a new bargin rig from a pile of parts but jumped for a new MB and CPU. heres the system...

ECS K7S5A pro rev 5.0
AMD athlon 1.33ghz
Volcano 6cu HSF
384m PC133 ram (256 & 128MB stick)
WD 80Gig HD
Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound
radeon 7200 vid
IOMajic DVD-RW
turbolink 420W PSU
Chieftec case
VCore is at 1.792 as reported by CPUID

I am using CPUFSB to raise my CPU to speeds of 1435.2mh. MBM-5is reporting cpu temps of 38C and case temps of 27C. this is under normal use, ie internet, win media player, with a cpu load of 5%. (jeez on my old system by gateway it would be sitting at 45% CPU load right now... but that was a slot 1 850mhz amd processor.)

When I try to run Prime95 it starts and then gives me a fatal error and stops, but my rig continues running good. Why is this? I have caused it to crash once by jacking the settings in CPUFSB to make it run a 1550.9MHZ. it diddnt like it and shut down. oops. I figure if I kill this one it only cost me 30 bucks off NewEgg. Oh well Ill buy a new one nstead of a bottle of Tequila next week.

My system has been running good at 1449.6MHZ for a week, but suddenly tonight it diddnt like it and started to hang when ever I tried too do something. I lowered it to run ar 1360 and it ran good. Now I am slowly brinning it back up to a faster speed.

what happened? am I slowly killing this little thunderbirdie?

also is it really "OverClocking" if I am using a prog like CPUFSB? I feel like I am cheating or not really doing anything. I read here about guys cutting bridges or blasting them with a 9V battery... (that scares me to think about.) And connecting others with conductive paint...

What else can I do to this? My MB does not support multipliers or voltage settings. I am considering the pin mod (wire mod? what ever it is called...) I ust want to play with this, change things and watch hat they do untill I fry this chip. Like I said it wont be hard to replace.... Give me some Ideas.

also what are the Steppings everyone talks about? My core has the code AYHJA. Thats the stepping right? I found write ups for these on Pally cores and Tbreds, but not for the thunderbird. but I still dont understand what it means?

I know these are a bunch of stupid newbie questins, but I am trying to learn, and mess up on a cheap system before I sspend money on a good system that I wouldnt want to kill with a newbies dumb mistakes.

Thank you for the responces tha I am sure I will get from you guys.

Mike

You have a good chip just a poor motherboard for overclocking. Basically you have no cpu voltage control. You can pencil trick the CPU to give you higher voltage by default.


http://www.ocinside.de/index_e.html?/html/workshop/socketa/socketa_resistors.html.

well at least I got one response. thanks Stomp. Ill try that trick next time I tear down my box.

The good thing about your motherboard is that it supports TBreds. Maybe sell you chip for $$ and upgrade to an 1800+ for around $50 from newegg.

You should reflash your BIOS to the overclocking one. Check the ECS forum since I cannot remember the name of it. Its not released by ECS. Just be aware that its not easy to that motherboard a good overclocker. But It would be much better to get your speed from the BIOS rather than from windows.

There are few other things but... well... your sig says your cheap so I dont think you want to upgrade to DDR. But still that rig is functional and even if you need to upgrade to a better video card and DDR you will still have a good rig. But get the 1800+