Rookie needs help w/ PII 266

[speedy4500]

Basically I can not get a new computer for a year or two so i am stuck with an old Gateway with a PII 266. I would like to overclock it somewhat, but it needs to be super-reliable as i have no money to spend on extra motherboard or proc. I hear that these old PIIs are good for overclocking, but i don't know how the stock mobo would handle it. Any tips for some easy overclocking would be appreciated. I was also looking at this program called "SoftFSB" that would allow me to OC the FSB in Windows. Has anyone tried this program or know if it really works well? Thanks for any help.

My goal is to hit from 350 MHz to 450 while being super-reliable and not requiring complex cooling solution.

[*spazzed*]

Soft FSB works pretty well, if you can find the right mother board or clock generator number on it, but personally I prefer CPUFSB, it has a larger range of motherboards and clock gens. i'm not too sure if it's will take you as high as you would like it to go, but it just may work :)

[Phil]

If you are lucky then you don't have a multiplyer locked cpu. Look on the board or in the bios for options or jumpers along the line of cpu multiplyer or cpu ratio. You won't hit 450mhz I'll tell you that now. You would need some crazy cooling for this which is far to expecnsive for the chip. 350mhz is quite acheiveable, even with the heatsink you have as long as it's fairly large. First of all check in the bios for cpu options which may have multiplyer options. If there are none then look on the board for jumpers controlling the multiplyer. Also what type of chipset does the board have, is it an LX or BX, this chip is near the cpu, it is a fairly large intel chip and it will say something like intel 82443LX or BX. If gatewat have provided a BX then you can overclock using the b21 trick which you will defintatelly need to reduce the multiplyer to 3 or 3.5 for. If you have an LX chip then you options are to increase the multiplyer to 4.5 or 5 if you can get that stable or use softfsb to set a 75mhz fsb for 300mhz

[Pinky]

*spazzed* (Jun 19, 2001 01:44 p.m.):
Soft FSB works pretty well, if you can find the right mother board or clock generator number on it, but personally I prefer CPUFSB, it has a larger range of motherboards and clock gens. i'm not too sure if it's will take you as high as you would like it to go, but it just may work :)

Ditto. But hey, give it a try, you never know.

I always thought that you'd have to up the voltage, even on the older procs... is this true with pentium 2s ?

[speedy4500]

I have downloaded CPUFSB. They don't have proprietary Gateway mobos, but they do have the Intel AL440LX, which i believe would be pretty much the same (if not the exact thing) as mine. I haven't fooled around with the FSB settings yet because I don't know what PLL is or does or what the Tray frequencies are...should i concern myself with them? Additionally, I could not locate physical jumpers or switches that change the multiplier/FSB, but on my motherboard reference page at Gateway's site (http://www.gateway.com/support/techdocs/references/motherboard/4a4ll0x0/4a4ll0x0.shtml they have instructions for entering BIOS maintenance mode and changing the frequency. I believe that this would be the method for changing the multiplier. One last topic: the only cooling i have in my computer is the stock heatsink on the proc and a fan on the bottom of the PSU sucking up the hot air. I am thinking that I need more cooling power, specifically a quality heatsink/fan combo for the proc and then knock out the two 5.25 bay covers on the front and attaching a case fan there. What do you all suggest for my problem(s)?

[Phil]

Don't bother going to a lot of expense on overclock this chip. You most you'll get extra from it is 12-25% and it's not worth the cost of new cooling for that. See what you can get out of it as it is. Like I said there is a good chance of it not being multiplyer limited which would allow you to set a multiplyer of 4.5 or 5 if it's there. If it is multilpyer limited then go for a 75mhz fsb which will give you 300mhz, you should experiment with cpufsb as the worse thing that could happen is it crashes and you reboot and try again.

[batboy]

If you can raise the bus speed (FSB) to 75 MHz, this is a nice safe overclock that should be fairly dependable and will give you 300 MHz. expecting to do 400 MHz or more is probably unreasonable. Any extra cooling you do, such as adding a front case fan blowing in, etc. will help. Usually, there is a place or space to add an 80mm fan to the front lower part of the case, if you have a mid-tower. Is there not a plastic holder that pops in on the inside? Sometimes the PC speaker is mounted there, if so, relocate the speaker and do a little modifying to fit a fan there. Good luck.

[Phil]

I wouldn't go the expense of better cooling though 300-333mhz is pretty much the most you will get unless you are lucky. I've messed about with really good cooling on a p2 233 and got it to post at 400mhz and run at 350mhz but I didn't do it for the performance only to see if I could. for adound $20-30 or so you could get your self a 400-533mhz ppga celeron and slocket and run that. Or if you were willing to spend a bit more money you could get a coppermine celeron up to 766mhz and slocket but this would cost close to $100, if you bought the 667 and got to a 75mhz fsb this would be 750mhz which is probabally about the best the poor old lx chip can take. For those that don't think he could run a coppermine on his system there is a chance it won't I don't know for sure but slockets can do wonders for systems that don't officially support coppermine. I've seen others with lx boards that have run the 766mhz celeron fine.

[batboy]

Phil speaks the truth.