Newb has choice 550 p3 or 600 celery!

[stompah]

He guys its my first post on this forum YEAH!!!

Well I need a better system than what I have. Right now I have two decent comps. My HP 600celeron and a generic 550 p3.

I want to overclock these! I am shooting for 900mhz from the celery and about 700 from the p3. I plan on purchasing an Abit be6-II. I have a generic and a Crucial stick of 128meg/133mhz RAM. I will probably Frakenstien the rest together and have yet to decide on a video card (but thats another thread) I would like to have plenty processing power for some games but I am not to picky. I figure the p3 overclocked will do just fine.

So what I need for advice is the p3 worth the overclock or should I use the celery and get close to a gig? Is the celery even overclockable (seeing that it came from a big manufacture)? Will the be6-II be good enough for the fine tuning of the bus speed? Will the crucial RAM be stable? Any suggestions for the video card will be appreciated.


Also any proven combonations with these 2 processors will be helpful

Thanx

[William]

celey will overclock much faster, the 550 will be much faster when not overclocked. Check the CPU database to see what people are getting. Your mobo is great to do the oc with.

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Hello stompah, Our forum welcomes you!

if you set your goals too high you may be doomed to failure. Set your goals to max the processors, but don't set the exact number. 900 may be a little high for that processor, but I honestly hope you make it.

I see you're buying a new board....I hope it's for the HP machine....if you intend to use the HP board you'll be lucky to get any extra mhz from it.

[stompah]

Shadow ÒÓ (Apr 17, 2001 01:32 a.m.):
I see you're buying a new board....I hope it's for the HP machine....if you intend to use the HP board you'll be lucky to get any extra mhz from it.

I actually went out and bought a case for the 550 machine as I hate the way it looks but the HP case its junk has a PSU somewhere in the 100 range not worth it + its too small to provide adequate cooling.

I couldnt use either board I currently have cause they have no AGP port. The only reason that Im doing this is cause im sick of my games running a little slow and I love to tinker so this will solve both needs ;).

And thanx for the greetings... now I'm waiting for Mr. B's reply then I will feel initiated (this forum gathers a lot of respect from me!)

Update: I checked the CPU its serial/batch # is l017a413-0954. I checked it against the database and the closest I got was two l017a410's running just above 900mhz. Does the last digit difference mean alot or is it close enough that I should assume(I hate this word) I am in the ballpark 900mhz?

Also, my HP PSU is not 'somewhere in the 100watt range' it is a 100 watt PSU. But the case is very solid and once you know how to break it down its quite nice I may keep it for my friends kids and buy a cheap celery for it.

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

The PIII overclocked will give you more bandwidth that the celery at a higher rate...that is if your 550 is a coppermine, one way you can tell is the coppermine has 256k cache, and the "katmai" has 512k.
the katmai will not bo much past 600 IMO, but a coppermine will go quite far, and 700 is not unreasonable for a 550E coppie. I preffer the PIII's performance over a celery, and the BE6II will make it scream....either way you decide, I know you will have fun.
Good Luck, and Welcome to the forum :-)

[Mr B]

Hey, welcome to the forums!! From what I've read here so far, it seem you've done some homework....good for you!

Well here's my take on this.....

A general rule of thumb P/// vs. Celeron, is that a Celeron equals a P/// running roughly 200 MHz slower. ie, if you got those chips to your "goals" (900 for the C600, 700 for the P///), they would be roughly the equivalent of each other. I think the C600 has a better shot at achieving your "goal" (I didn't happen to cross ref those numbers) as the majority of the C600's will hit 100 FSB, or 900 MHz, with some going higher. There's a couple of members in here that just got C600's...one got 950 at 1.8v, I think, the other got the same at default voltage, then got over 1 GHz at 1.9v.

A couple of big points...first and foremost is cooling. Don't skimp here, and the cpu will run cooler, faster, longer. I had a Gorb on my C600, and when I upgraded to an Alpha PEP66T, it not only went slightly faster, but dropped around 8 degrees celcius, too. Steer clear of the Gorb (actually any Orbs, IMHO). Look into the Alphas and GlobalWins....good stuff.

Second, I'm assuming the C600 system is a s370 motherboard. To run this chip on a BE6 II, you will need to get a slocket adapter. When you get one, make SURE it is Coppermine compatable, and has provision for adjusting the voltage onboard. I personally have a Soltek SL02A++, and have had success with it, but there are a few others worth mentioning;

Asus, Iwill (can't remember the model names for these two), Abit !!!, MSI (Master V2.0) are a few other makes that will work well for this application. Coppermine and Voltage...gotta have 'em.

The BE6 II is a great board. I've been wanting one of these for a while now, but one has never made it's presence known when I have the $$$. So, I've had A-Trends, and Soyo's and now an Asus P3C2000. Kind of quirky, but works well. I'd trade it for a BE6 II in a heartbeat, though...=)

I'd get a 300W PSU, minimum, if you are going to use that case. 100W is useless.

I got a Hercules 3D Prophet II MX (32MB) vid card a while ago, and have been quite happy with it. These are selling for at or below $100 (below, if you catch a good sale), because they've just released a newer card, with 64MB onboard RAM, for around $150 or so. (Jeez, wish I coulda waited a month...looks like a great card!)

Overclocking is kind of a crapshoot. Each chip runs differently from each other. One C600 I had maxed at 945, my other made it all the way to 1053. Both were made in Malasia, had similar codes, but were from different batches 6 weeks apart. Using others numbers as a gauge is ok, as a guarrantee is not. The C600 SHOULD make it to 900, but it might not, similarly, the P/// should get to 700+, if it's a CuMine, but might not. About the best advice here, is to try them both, and see which will run the best of the two. Again, bear in mind the P/// about 200 MHz slower than the Celeron is roughly equivilant. The P/// makes up the deficiency with the better L2 cache, and the fact the memory bus speed is much higher.

Try them both and see.....

Thanks for the kind words, welcome to the forums! Good luck!

Mr B

[stompah]

Hey Mr B thanx for the post and everybodyelse a big THANX!!!!
First the cooling issue: when I bought the P3 system the builder was a dumbass and somehow messed the HS/F up. Right now as I am looking at it I have elastics (SO HACK I KNOW) holding the HS/F to the chip. The comp wouldn't fully boot into Win98 because the MB would sense the overheating. So, due to that I now know the importance of cooling (it took me months to figure this out even the seller/moron couldnt figure it out). I have yet to decide on the cooling for now (getting a solid comp with a graphics card is foremost here as I currently have no AGP port and I dont want to saddle myself with a PCI card). People seem rebel against the GOrb after they become knowledgeable. So I will surf sites when the time and $money$ become available.

Now here is my problem. The Slotket, I have yet to find Soltek offered at the retailers I have checked. I have heard negatives on the Abit. Asus well if thats what I wanted then I should have bought an Asus board (as if it matters now with the merger). Where have you purchased your Soltek Mr B?

Abit BE-6 II for $99 @ http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/doSearch.hmx?bop=and&scriteria=abit+be6&UID=&CID=&Back=&n=1
They have sent three emails already, confirming SAME-DAY shipment! + plus they have a good reseller rating.

Now the 100 watt PSU is in the HP box which I do not plan to use as an O/C box It will be my everlasting slowmobile. I currently have a Codegen 250watt silver(looks sharp!) That I purchased from Ubid.com for $52.79 shipped. I know I could have bought better but looks are important and PSUs are interchangeable. I have a spare 200watt PSU that I may build a box and use to run the case fans.

And for the graphics card I had liked the hurcules but ATI seems more popular and I dont really need a kick-ass card just something that beats the 11mb. intergrated video the HP has. I purchased this from Newegg.com: $78+1for FedEx ATI Radeon 32MB DDR 4X AGP Video Card - LE Version -Powered by
the ATI RADEON graphics processing unit (GPU) Featuring ATIs
CHARISMA ENGINE, PIXEL TAPESTRY and VIDEO IMMERSION
technologies NO Hyper Z ! - OEM Version - NO TV OUT . I guess the 'OEM' designation may mean no drivers so I'll wait till i recieve the card before I fret. (Time is key) Plus I may enable the Hyper Z.

Now the Celery I know is has cBO stepping (L017A413-0954 SL46U @ 1.5v). A slight frown has come to my face as I learn this. But, alas not all can be perfect in my world. I will lower my expectations down to 850mhz ;-) But if $$$ and a good weekend allow I will try to shoot for the 1g mark even if I burn it in the process. Who knows the proc has logged a lot of hours at home in the HP maybe this could be the burn-in that works?
And for the P3 I have no #s due to the elastic situation. But I still have my hopes for my 750 mhz mark!

Mr B thanx for the insight on the P3 vs. Cel I will keep that in mind though I am already leaning toward the P3 anyway due to DocClock's bandwidth mention.

AHH GREAT FORUM NOT A FLAME IN SIGHT!!!

PS I will keep you posted when the O/C race begins!!!!!!!!

[Slake]

Welcome from a fellow Cel 600 owner looking to upgrade out of HP hell. I just ordered an Asus Cusl2-C Black Pearl mobo tonight. I was torn between the BE6-2 and the Asus. I decided to go with the newer chipset. I hope I don't regret it. The BE6 is a legend. I'll be following your progress and taking notes. We are indeed in the company of the finest overclockers and nicest people in the world.
Lotsa luck!

[Mr B]

I got the Soltek SL02A++ thru e-BAY. Paid around $16 or so for it. Yeah, I've heard some people have had problems with the Abit !!! slocket as well. I had one, and didn't have problems, so I guess they're not all bad (or I'm just lucky).

Good luck!

Mr B

[Carmine_Paterno]

Just to let you know about your Celeron II 600 (SL46U)......I have the same one with a Golden Orb (GORB) @ 1 ghz stable @ 2.0v. I just got it stable about 1 hour ago, i added a 80MM Delta fan (NICE! I didn't know it was a delta) and o/ced it to 30 volts, Major CFM! I can stand a full 1 1/2 feet away and can still feel it blowing! I can post up to 116 fsb, but on my motherboard in the bios it says 116, but it really runs @ 117 which is really 1054mhz. I can't wait to get my Peltier, the Gorb, should cool it nicely.

The cool thing, is that it isn't even done with burning in. If i let it run for maybe a week, i should hitt something like 1030---something like that. My burnin method is to let the quake3arena crusher demo run on everything all the way up @ 1024X768 with my VooDoo3, and seti running in the background. Then after 5 hours of that, i do 3dmark2001 demo loop.

Anyway, i would recommend the Abit SA6R, i have heard really good things about it. It is the newest board from Abit, and the best. I have the Abit BF6, and this baby is really good, because of it's 1mhz increments all the way to 200mhz fsb! About memory, For a good overclock, you would need some memory that can go above 100mhz fsb.

[surfinguru]

FWIW, I have been running a slot1 550e (cu'mine) cA2 stepping @ 733 on an Abit BE6-2 rev 1.1 with no problems. I can run it at 800 if I'm just browsing or god forbid, doing work, but it becomes a little unstable when playing 3d games due to lack of better cooling. Just got the 700 cC0 last night and it went straight to 933 on the same mobo. Good luck....