Does a P166mmx have any life left ??

[Tool Fan]

I am new to OC and need a little help deciding if squeezing a little more power out of this old chip is worth the effort. All i want to be able to do is play quake 3 with my buddies online. If OCing is a possibility then I will by a decent grafix card also.

The computer is a Gateway2000 P5-166
The board is a etched "E139761" which i believe is INTEL.
The cpu has a sticker on the side "cpupen036aaww 166cmhz"
The board has jumpers that can be set to 200mhz.
Sandra says that the chip is capable of 166-233mhz.

Please help, I don't want to fry the system, just get more preformance.

[jeff_harrison_344]

To tell ypu the truth, no :(

Heheh, 1st of all, evern with a geforce2 Ultra, you wouln't get great FPS with that CPU no matter what, and second of all, as of overclocking that CPU, dont do it. Two reasons, 1) If you don't have a backup CPU, and you attempt to overclock this one, and fry it,ur dead, and 2) You would only be able to get to like 200Mhz, which would be NO difference at all.

So not to put you down or anything, but get a new CPU also :=)

[Nomis]

what sandra is saying is that you got one of the model 166-233. and the jumper on your motherboard is for a 200MHz MMX processor. If you use that jumper, there is probably nothing will happen because the lower voltage output from your 166MHz might not run it at 200MHz. The Multipler might also be an issue too.

[vipez888]

Well, I still have my p166mmx running at 233mhz(4 years now), just by using a 3.5x multiplier setting. I had to increase the voltage to 2.9V.

It works well with my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, of course overclocking the video card to 190mhz doesn't make much difference, due to the cpu only running at 233mhz.

But my system is stable at 233, i'd probably go higher, but my mobo limits the bus at 66mhz.

[Treker]

Tool Fan (Mar 21, 2001 07:01 p.m.):
I am new to OC and need a little help deciding if squeezing a little more power out of this old chip is worth the effort. All i want to be able to do is play quake 3 with my buddies online. If OCing is a possibility then I will by a decent grafix card also.

The computer is a Gateway2000 P5-166
The board is a etched "E139761" which i believe is INTEL.
The cpu has a sticker on the side "cpupen036aaww 166cmhz"
The board has jumpers that can be set to 200mhz.
Sandra says that the chip is capable of 166-233mhz.

Please help, I don't want to fry the system, just get more preformance.


Read My Artical Here

http://www.overclockers.com/articles361/

Thats what I did, I beleive it would work for you as you also have a socket 7 chip, best to check http://www.powerleap.com for issues with your board.

This upgrade is a brease, I'm doing 400mhz EASY, and going to hit 500mhz as soon as I hack this mobo clock chip.. will write a review for that too.

-Trek

[Commited]

Hey m8.
I have a P166MMX@233MMX on a Compaq board that was designed for the non MMX jobbies.
I guess it was just luck.
Buy a K6-2 550, and a geforce graphics card...

[Tool Fan]

Thanks for the input guys. I still have a couple of questions, Vipez, how did you get to 233 from 166 ? and Trek, i went to the powerleap site and an AMD K6-III upgrade inc. the chip is $200 + $45 for the required BIOS upgrade. Any help out there with those prices? also, is there going to be any issues changing my system from a Pentium to an AMD ?? This still seems cheaper than a total upgrade, but still would like some more input.

[batboy]

If that is indeed an Intel brand motherboard, those are known to have little if any o/c potential. What little bit of performance gain you achieve will not be enough, you'll still get you butt fragged in Quake 3, you probably should spend your money upgrading. Sooner or later you'll have too anyway. Why spend any money on a totally obsolete machine only to be disappointed in marginal gains when you could spend just a little more and get solid noticeable improvements.

[Commited]

Try lookin on the mobo for switches...

[Tim-]

I've used up all my old 166-200 machines as firewalls, proxy servers, email servers, and MP3 servers. They work just fine for these applications. MP3 servers being alright as long as you don't have a lot of users trying to access it all at once.

My last 233MMX is loaned out but has a K6-3-400 waiting to run at 500 when it returns. Fortunately it has a late Soyo Socket 7 motherboard that will support the K6-3 without any adaptors.

[William]

Tool Fan (Mar 22, 2001 09:18 a.m.):
Thanks for the input guys. I still have a couple of questions, Vipez, how did you get to 233 from 166 ? and Trek, i went to the powerleap site and an AMD K6-III upgrade inc. the chip is $200 + $45 for the required BIOS upgrade. Any help out there with those prices? also, is there going to be any issues changing my system from a Pentium to an AMD ?? This still seems cheaper than a total upgrade, but still would like some more input.

I just bought a MSI K7T Turbo-R, Duron 700, Fop 38, and 256mb Crucial RAM for around 320. instead of spending of $245 for a small updgrade to the K6-III, for 75 bucks you can have a total system upgrade ready for anything. Much better punch for the money, and not a huge difference. But the powerleap is interesting, would be extremely interesting if it was cheaper though. With pricing as low as it is, doing everything now just makes more sense.

BTW, nice article on the Pros and Cons of the powerleap treker. Very well written. I give it an A+.

PS Treker, with this nice shiney new system, help out the oc.com folding team. Click below to find out more.