AMD K6-2 300Mhz w\ASUS SP97-V

[jperickson]

Hello, I have an AMD K6-2 300Mhz CPU with an ASUS SP97-V motherboard. I am new to overclocking and just wanted to ask the pro's (you people) if it can be done, what my performance can be with decent cooling, and how to go about it. I'll appriciate any input, thanks.-jp

[eobard]

Originally posted by jperickson
Hello, I have an AMD K6-2 300Mhz CPU with an ASUS SP97-V motherboard. I am new to overclocking and just wanted to ask the pro's (you people) if it can be done, what my performance can be with decent cooling, and how to go about it. I'll appriciate any input, thanks.-jp

Anything's possible. If you want to know what the average overclock is then just go to the cpu database from the fron page and look up your specific chip. Without doing any modifications you should probably be able to add a .5 clock multiple to your chip. Just change the jumpers on the motherboard from 3 to 3.5 (this assumes you have a 100mhz front side bus) as your manual specifies. If you don't have a manual you should be able to get a copy on line from the manufacturer. Anything more than that will probably require some effort on your part. People generally regard the K6 family as poor overclockers but I'm getting an extra 24.4% out of mine and that's not too bad. If you want to go for more than 350mhz then you can do several things. Upping your voltage is one. Computer chips are like people. An average person eats an average amount of food but if that average person decided to become an athalete he'd need to eat more food (fuel) to sustain his extra performance (output). If you want to run a cpu significantly above spec you'll need to increase it's electrical intake (fuel) to sustain it's extra performance (output). If you have a K6-2 instead of a K6-2+ (I'm not sure if they even made the "+" series at 300mhz) then your base voltage will be 2.2 volts. My chip is running at 2.5 but I have a case modification and heatsink modification to help disperse the extra heat. My heatsink gets very hot at 2.7 volts. Every case is different and you'll have to find you chip's comfort zone but I think less than 2.7 volts is a good safety zone. Your manual will show which jumpers or switches to change to increase your voltage. Does your motherboard have a temperature sensor? If it does let me know what your temps are. If you do increase the voltage I suggest you put some extra fans in the case to move the hot air out. Also you could put a socket A or socket 370 heat sink / fan combo on your chip, "FRANK" has a socket A sink on his system and he has an even better overclock percentage on his chip than I have on mine. I increased my cooling by removing the aluminum cap from the top of my chip. This can be a dangerous process, I severly damaged the surface of my cpu but fortunately the damage was limited to the surface of the chip and it still works. I suggest trying other things to get extra cooling first before removing the cap. Rounding your cables won't cool the system directly but they'll help reduce the impedence of airflow that can result in a few degrees reduction in temps that may be blocking you from getting to that next speed point.


And also it never hurts to ask as many questions as possible. The people here aren't jerks and won't harass you if you seem light on knowledge. Everyone has to start on the bottom and the people here recognize that. Welcome aboard. :)

[FRANK]

First of all Welcome to the best overclocking site on the NET!

That being said;

eobard, I'm impressed that you remembered me and mentioned me in your reply.

One thing that I think a lot of people overlook when considering the K6 line of CPU' is the percentage of increase when they are overclocked. Even the "lowly" K6-2's still give a respectful return considering what you're starting with. For instance, a 100MHz increase to a 400MHz K6-2 is a 25% improvement, a number that is considered to be quite good even with today’s overclocker friendly T-BIRDS. A 25% increase to a 1.2G CPU would yield 1.5G, and most do not reach that high. If you were to be able to get your 300 to 350MHz, that would be approx an 18% increase, that's about what most are getting out of the 1.4G T-BIRDS.

Do yourself a favor and spend some time in the "Beginners Guide" on the front page of this site, there you will find a wealth of information on the black art of overclocking.

As eobard said in his post above, the two biggest issues with these CPU's are voltage and heat. I agree with him as far as 2.7V being the safe maximum. For a heat sink, you have to get the most efficient one that will fit on there. I've found that the Global Win FOP's do nicely, I've migrated a couple of FOP 32's down from my socket A systems as I've upgraded them. You could do the same thing in reverse, buy the socket A heat sink with an eye toward moving it to a newer system down the road.

Although these CPU's don't like a whole lot of FSB, see what you can get out of it, I've gotten them to 112MHz. This should yield a better performing system.

Regardless how fast you can get the processor going, you'll still going to be saddled by the older peripherals such as an ATA33 IDE controller, SIMM or PC66 memory with it's limited bus, the slower CD ROM, no AGP etc. With the aging hardware you may also run into problems if you decide to upgrade your operating system to ME, and I understand that WIN XP will really narrow the legacy hardware selection even more.

One thing that you can't lose sight of, is the fact that the socket 7 platform is really showing it's age at this time. Keep in mind that these CPU's were introduced to compete with the early Pentiums and although they are still the subject of quite a bit of interest today, I would make sure that you don't get too caught up in upgrading and invest too much money. It'll cost you about $50.00 to replace that K6-2 whereas a 750 DURON will cost you about $35.00, with a compatable motherboard coming in at less than $80.00.

If you want to give it a try and keep it conservative, then good luck. However, for the cost of a few good upgrades to that aging platform you could be well on your way to a newer system with a viable upgrade path down the road and a very good chance of having a system that'll be good for as much as 2G in the very near future.

If you're looking for a lot of discussion on these older CPU's, do a bit of research in the older posts of this forum from about 4 to 6 weeks ago, there are several very good threads back there.

Good Luck!