how do i overclock pent. 166?

[frankrizzello]

i am fairly new to this. programing computers that is. i have been surfing for a long time, but never tried to actually do anything like overclock a cpu. I have biult my own system twice but that is fairly straight forward. i just installed a new hardrive in an old pentuim 1, 166 mhz system, i am giving it to my mom. i have windows 2000 pro on it, but it would be nice to put windows xp on. but ive been told t hat it wont run on that small of a cpu. anyway i want to try and overclock it. if possible.

Please tell me how to do it. or anything else you need to know about the system. eg.motherboard or what have you.

thanks a bunch.:D

[DAGO]

You are probably out of luck on this one...The 166 isn't likely fast enough for anything modern...What we would need here is more info...make and model, motherboard model, amount of Ram...etc...
With the right info I am sure someone will help you out...but I wouldn't be getting my hopes up...:D

[Mr B]

I agree...an upgrade is in order.

**Moved post to "intel CPU's".**

Mr B

[Yodums]

To overclock there are jumpers around the CPU..

I would really recommend an upgrade.. Upgrades are cheap now and days ... 500 Canadian for 1gig..

Anyways your way below today's standards.. And I wouldn't recommend any other OS other than Win 98 or Win 95 because it'd run quite slow.. And definitly not XP because .. You need at least 256 ram for that.. And 256 EDO ram is expensive LOL! :)

[FRANK]

First of all, Welcome to the forums.

Depending on the motherboard that you have, if I remember correctly the Pentium 166 is on the socket 7 platform, a mild upgrading may be worthwhile. Provided that you have the voltage/ FSB/ multiplier options on the board you could conceivably upgrade to an AMD k6, or a Pentium 233MMX (easily overclocked to 266).

Remember that the 72pin EDO simms that that board may require are not as readily available as they used to be. You are also generally limited as to the amount of RAM that those boards will support. This memory is expensive, about $75 for 64MBs, and will probably have to be installed in pairs.

The biggest thing to consider when approaching a project like that is the cost. With the newer technology being released at a rapid pace, the price of the last great thing drops considerably. Today you can easily piece together a decent system that will have a future upgrade path to well over 1g for the price of a few upgrades to an aging system.

First and second generation socket A motherboards can be had in the $50 to $60 range with DURONs available for about $50. 256MBs of PC133 RAM, about $25.

With the downside covered above, you can still gather a lot of experience by "playing" with this system. You need to find out the manufacturer of the motherboard and see what options are available as mentioned above.

Go to the "CPU DATABASE" located on the front page of this site, to see what others have gotten out of similar systems.

I think the 166 runs on a 66MHz FSB with a 2.5 multiplier, try increasing it to 75 or possibly 83MHz (if the board supports it). If I remember correctly, the Vcore is somewhere around 2.9V on that CPU (it is etched on the CPU), try increasing it slightly, maybe 0.2V (that's 2/10's). Keep in mind that the higher the voltage, the higher the temperatures. You probably haven't got any temperature sensors on that board so go cautiously, make sure that you have adequate cooling. The factory hsf is probably not enough, you should be able to use a socket A hsf provided that you have adequate clearance around the CPU.

If you follow the generally accepted methods of overclocking you may see a nice little overclock. Go to the front page and check out the "Beginners Guide". In there you will find a wealth of information that can be applied to just about any system.

Gather as much information about your hardware as you can, this can help you understand how each modification you do will affect other parts of the system, how increasing the FSB changes the PCI BUS etc.

Research, the key to a successful overclocking experience!

One other thing, with that aging platform, I don't think that you would be able to take advantage of the newer features of XP (video and sound editing etc). Win XP is based on the same kernel as WIN 2K, so if you are running stable and fast enough with 2K, don't mess with it.

I hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.

Good Luck!

[deez]

p166 is multiplier unlocked...i got mine up to a blazing 180 (stable) and posted at 200 just by bumping the multiplier up a notch...this was a few years ago

its probably a jumper on your board to adjust multiplier

read your manual

[Bond_]

I have one of those @ 233Mhz an di love it easy and old way to overclock non-bios settings just GlodFingers ... you probably will find some dip switckes or jumpers near to you cpu socket or pci/isa slots ( we talking abou intel P166Mhz socket 7 cpu) all the possible overclocking settings should be printed in the board you should see a thable printed there like this one:

Mutiplier dip switche:
SW1 4 5 6
1.5/3.5x off off off
2x on off off
2.5x on on off
3x off on off

FSB dip switche:
SW1 1 2 3
60Mhz off on on
66Mhz on off on

V.core dip switche:
SW2 1 2 3 4
3.5v Like the other
3.3v ones just change on
3.2v or off the settings
2.9v follow the table printed
2.8v on your board!!!!

if you got jumpers it will be something like:
JP15
1-2 60Mhz FSB
2-3 66Mhz FSB

JP14
1-2 2.5x Multiplier
2-3 3.0x Multiplier

It won't rhe same has this one but try to find something like this in your board...
Hope it helps...GoOd LuCk!!!!!

[frankrizzello]

thanks for the replies guys.

my mother board is a P/1- P55TP4N

im not sure about the 55 it might be SS. hard to tell.

does this help.

jumpers 14 and 15 are side by side and they both have jumpers on them.

and there are no switches. i did find a table like this.

j14 j15 cpu/bus ratio
0 0 x1.5
0 s x2
s 0 x3
s s x2.5

what does this mean? what are the 0's and s's.

thanks:D

[DAppel]

O means OPEN, and S means SHORT. A jumper is a pair of pins that are not connected together. Shorting means connecting them with those little plastic caps (they have a conductor inside), while opening means removing the cap.

The table means that there are two jumpers : J14 and J15. By opening/shorting those two jumpers you can have 4 different combinations, all shown on the table.

The 55 probably is really 55. It´s intel´s code for Pentium MMX. The old pentium classic was the P54C, and the MMX is the P55C.

[DAppel]

If they are shorted you are using 2.5x 66MHz = 166MHz (default setting).
Setting your FSB to 75MHz would and up in 187.5MHz, and 83MHz would end up in 207.5MHz.

The MMXs have a internal device that overrides the 1.5x with 3.5x. It seems that it overrides the 2x with 3x as well, not sure though. What is a killer here is the fact that you board doesn´t seem to feature a 3x multiplier.
This will make thing though, because not all cards (and specially HDs) are capable of working with 37MHz or 41MHz PCI clocks (1/2 FSB clock). If yours doesn´t, and if you can´t use 3x, then you are stuck with 2.5x66=166 or 3.5x66=233. Tho there are some chips capable of 233, not all are , so you may be a little out of luck here.

Maybe it´s possible to raise the voltage really high (3.2V) and run 233 with a strong cooling, but if it´s your momma´s PC it may not be a good idea, stability-wise.

[frankrizzello]

how do i set my fsb.? and when i overclock will i have to do anything to the operating system, like reinstall, or reformat my harddrive.?:D

[frankrizzello]

hello, someone please help me.
its been like 3 days. i need to get this done.
please make a reply.
thanks a bunch.:cool: