Stepping Rev?

[surfinguru]

Ok, still a newb trying to make sense of all this, I've got a PIII 550e (secc2). How do I figure out the stepping rev? On the top of the plastic cover it says cA2. Is this what I should be looking for? (I have the whole product number written down at home but I'm at work right now.)

Thanks!

[Phil]

yes that is the stepping, the higher up in the alphabet the better, so for example a cBO is newer than your cA2 and a cCO is newer than that.

[surfinguru]

So what you're saying then is, I don't have an "ideal" candidate for o/c then? Guess it's time for that 700.........

[LimeyGreg]

Well how fast do you want to go? If you check the database you'll find it should go to around 850Mhz with adequate cooling and some extra Vcore.

Be sure to have some good ram, good video card and hard drives. Last, but certainly not least - and over-clocking friendly mobo.

I have P3-550E @ 155fsb & Vcore @ 1.9v (857Mhz - It'll get into win98 @ 157 but then locks up when I try to do something), air cooled using original "Panaflow Orb" (made for HP Risk Proc), new stick PC-166 CAS-2 256meg ram (Tonicom), Asus V7700 G2 (oc'd to215/390), pair Quantum FireBall 7200 rpm 20Gb drives on Promise UDMA-66 "hacked to raid" controller running in striped mode 0, single 20gb 7200rpm removable Maxtor (for backup), Intel Pro 10/100 ISA NIC (had to put something in that dinosaur slot), Diamond MX-300 with Aureal drivers, Pioneer 16X DVD, Phillips CDR-W, IDE Orb drive, LS-120 3-1/2" IDE drive, Enermax 550 psu (for steady, clean power), all this on an Abit BE6-2 rev 1.0 mobo.

Geez - I didn't realise I had so much s*#t crammed in my mid-tower.

[Phil]

don't presume becasue you have an older stepping you can't overclock well, try first, all I was saying is that it is less likely you will get much of an overclock out of it