BH6 and celemine (again!)

[Sumbodi]

Hi..

System is

Abit BH6 v1.0x
Celeron 366 @458 MHz
Extra cooling only front mounted case fan
128mb PC100 DIMM, 256mb PC133 DIMM
2x voodoo 2 PCI (SLI)
i740 AGP card (8mb)
PCI sound card (yamaha ds-xg)
ISA modem
ISA Scsi card
HDD: IBM 6gb, samsung 4gb

I am about to commit to a slotket and a celemine and I have lots of questions! I still want to use the 128mb dimm I have. This probably confines me to fsb 100. Is it best to just ditch that ram and run at 133MHz?

Should I get a 1.0, 1.1 GHz; or a 766 MHz and O/C as far as it goes? does the 766 need to be a cD0 stepping ID?

There is a big price difference where I am between the 766 and the 1.0, 1.1
Would I have more chance of success going for the faster chip and not O/Cing? - I thought this was the better option, then I can avoid funny PCI clocks etc.

Also, would I need a good HSF for either option? or just when O/Cing. I havent installed a cpu fan before is it ... easy?

Also, is it possible to put the 1.2 GHz with the 256k cache on a slotket?

Thanks in advance :)

[batboy]

I think those BH6 boards do not have a 1/4 divider, so running a CPU at 133 FSB will stress the PCI bus too much for normal usage. I'd get a 1 gig or a 1.1 gig CPU that runs at a default 100 FSB. You'll still be able to overclock at 112 FSB fairly easily. The PC-100 RAM may or may not handle the overclock. Personally, I'd pull the 128 meg stick out for overclocking. The Intel retail heatsink and fan is ok if you're not going to overclock, but if you do overclock, I'd recommend getting a better CPU cooler. The 1.2 gig CPUs are the Tualatins, they will not work on your motherboard with a standard slotket.

[Phil]

don't count that pc100 dimm out yet though, theres a chance it may even be pc133. I own a pc100 cas2 crucial dimm that is in actual fact pc133 and runs at 133mhz cas2 no problem and 150mhz cas3 (highest board would go) I also have a cas3 pc100 generic dimm that does 133mhz cas 3 and 112mhz cas2. Of course not all pc100 is great, I have another couple of pc100 dimms that just about manage 100mhz cas2 but even 103mhz cas2 is unstable and I need to drop to cas3 to get that and 112mhz stable and 133mhz just won't go. But test your memory first as you may be pleasantly surprised and if not then you can replace it.
I think batboy is right about the pci divider on your board, check out the abit to see if you can confirm this, I don't know if a bios flash would solve the problem or not if it doesn't support it but like I said check their site.
Of course even if your memory and board will be ok wit a 133mhz fsb, your i740 AGP card could still be an issue, you can test this by selecting a 1/1 agp divider at a 100mhz bus, if it works fine on this setting then the 89mhz agp wouldn't be a problem, if not then try dropping the fsb down to what ever option is closest to 89mhz in your bios (probabally 83mhz) and if it handles that then theres a good chance an 89mhz fsb will be ok but not certain, hopefully it will be ok at 100mhz.

[batboy]

Of course, Phil is right about the RAM. Lots of PC-100 RAM will overclock quite nicely. I guess what I meant was to experiment without the PC-100 stick in first. Once you get the system stable, feel free to put it back in and see if it works ok. This way, you'll avoid one possible headache.

[Sumbodi]

Thanks for the replies :)

The BH6 indeed can't support 1/4 PCI dividers.

Right now I'm running at 83 MHz FSB, with 1/2 PCI divider.. that makes for 41.5 MHz. If I run at 133MHz, then a 1/3 PCI divider will give 44.3 MHz.. is the difference that significant?

[batboy]

There are a few people that claim they can run the PCI bus that fast, but to be honest, most components can't handle that much without having lots of stability problems. Expect data corruption from time to time on your harddrive too. If you have the PCI bus at 41.5 right now, then you might be able to run 124 FSB ok with a new CPU, that's about the same. Personally, I have sometimes have stability problems at about anything above 40 MHz on the PCI bus.

[muddocktor]

I have a BH6 rev. 1.0 board and also 1 of the new cD0 stepping 1000E chips, besides the cC0 slot1 1000E proc I'm presently running in this board. The cD0 chip would boot up fine on a 133 fsb, but I was having severe stability problems with the high pci bus speeds. The hard drive was giving random read and write errors and I almost screwed my Win98 install with the high pci bus speeds. The highest bus speed that my BH6 is totally stable on is 112 fsb. Of course a different hard drive might be able to handle the high pci bus speed stably, but I would be very careful when pushing the pci bus past 37 mhz.