OC trouble with Celeron 900 on ABit BH6

[ssartel]

I have an Abit BH6 rev 1 with SS bios and read various forum topics regarding oc success with Celeron 900's. I bought a retail box 900, and it will not OC at all. Works fine at 100MHz X 9(posts at 901MHz which I thought was a bit wierd), but setting to next available bus speed on this board, 112MHz, resulted in failure of the machine to boot. I'd get a CPu inoperable message and I have to revert back to 100MHz. Any suggestions out there or am I just SOL? I tried bumping voltage to 1.85V tops without any change. I'm using an Asus S370-DL slotket. AGP/CPU is set to 2/3. I'm using PC100 RAM but not sure it that would cause the machine to not boot. Thanks for any help that anyone could provide. Also, I read several comments about various "stepping" ratings for chips and am having a hard time finding a good explanation of what the heck that is. Cel 900 was a cD0 what ever that means. Sorry for being ignorant in that regard. A bit new at this game. Thanks.

[batboy]

That Celly 900 should easily overclock to a least 112 FSB. Make sure the "speed error check" is disabled in the BIOS. The two most common problems I can think of first off would be a heat problem or the RAM wimping out.

[slim_lim]

Yep, sounds like you left the "speed error check" option on. Switch it off in CMOS and happy o/c'ing! Persoanlly I was able to get this CPU to run 1116/124 on my BH6, but at this FSB my USB ports stopped functioning, so I had to go back to 1008/112. Maybe you'll do better. Good luck!

[ssartel]

You guys were correct. Speed error check was enabled. I turned it off and badda bing badda boom. I got it up to 124MHz but the system became flaky. I need to get some faster memory now. Only have PC100. I also added an ATA 100 controller card and a WD 40 gig 7200 RPM ATA 100 drive after I fixed that speed check problem. Have it at 1008 MHz now and with that drive, MAN does this sucker boot up fast now. It was worth every penny spent on both the processor and the ATA 100 gear, expecially the ATA 100 drive. What a difference. Thanks for the help!

[batboy]

Awww right, glad to hear it, that is good news.

[slim_lim]

You can probably get it to stay stable @124fsb if you increase the voltage. Mine took 1.95v. to be stable @ that speed. Be careful though - increasing voltage increases the heat as well, so go in small steps and back off if the CPU gets too hot. I went as far as 2.20v. trying to hit 1200mhz (no luck) - but I think it was moderately risky. To be safe I wouldn't go higher than 2.00v and if you can't keep it stable @1116mhz @ this voltage let it go.
I don't think it's your memory, it sure wasn't mine: I have 2 generic pc100 64mb cas3 sticks + 256mb crucial pc133 cas2. Experimenting with removing inferior RAM and leaving the Crucial in didn't give any improvement in stability below 133fsb. What I'm saying is most pc100 sticks can hit 124mhz easy.

[Lancelot]

Did you set your CAS-latency to 3-3-3? I had good quality PC100 2-2-2 RAM that would run upto 135Mhz with 3-3-3.

[batboy]

I would not get too radical with CPU core voltage unless you have excellent cooling and load temps are well below 40 degrees. Running at 2.2v is insane and just asking for a fried CPU. There is no margin for error. Sound like Sartel needs to get some extra cooling before going too much farther. Lots of those old BH6 boards only had a max of 1/3 PCI divider, so 124 FSB might be out of the question for a stable system.

[takiwa]

124 is about as high as you are gonna get with that 900, no matter what you do. There are a few peeps in the database claiming more, but I doubt ALOT of those claims...I could boot at 1200...but never stable for more than a few minutes at best...124 is roughly tops, even with killer memory...get used to 1116. I wasn't impressed with the 900 at all...

On a lighter note, just ordered a vh6t with a 1.1 Tualeron...will see if this setup is better...:eh?:

[muddocktor]

My main problem with the 124 fsb on the old BH6 rev. 1.01 board I used to have was hard drive corruption due to the high pci bus speeds. The 1000E cD0 proc was fine at that speed but I kept getting errors on the hard drive. Also, I had Cas2 PC133 ram, so that wasn't the problem. That cD0 proc is now running on my Soyo board at 1260 with no problem and with the same ram, but the Soyo board had a 1/4 pci divider.

[Pinky]

Originally posted by takiwa
124 is about as high as you are gonna get with that 900, no matter what you do. There are a few peeps in the database claiming more, but I doubt ALOT of those claims...I could boot at 1200...but never stable for more than a few minutes at best...124 is roughly tops, even with killer memory...get used to 1116. I wasn't impressed with the 900 at all...

On a lighter note, just ordered a vh6t with a 1.1 Tualeron...will see if this setup is better...:eh?:

I concur on all points, I think the multiplier on the 900 celerons is too high for the core at a reasonable voltage.

Let me know when that cellie arrives, I'd be interested in how it does ;)

[slim_lim]

My hard drives & cdrw are just fine @ 124fsb @ bh6 1.01 1/3 divider - it's the stupid USB that screws up. Maybe I'll buy a $5 PCI-to-USB adapter card and see if I can run USB properly from there.
About cooling: I have Intel stock cooler, crappy thermal pad and all, cooling this baby and had no CPU trouble at all running it @124fsb 1.95v for days on end and even attempting 2.20v. to hit 1200mhz (It'll post and boot to DOS but not Windows. While in DOS, drive acess is fine [that's 133fbs 1/3 divider BTW :eek: ], but anything cpu intensive like opening a .zip freezes it dead).