AMD 2500+ and Overclocking Question (First Build)

I am planning on building my first PC and have put together my Christmas wish list of parts. This is my first build and I want it to go a smooth as possible. The wife is already pushing for a prebuilt system (dell) but I assured her that building is the way to go.

I would like to overclock it to the speed of a +3200 but I am uncertain if the new 2500+’s can be overclock to this speed (assuming I will be getting a locked processor).

As far as Motherboard, CPU, Cooling and Memory goes, do you think the following will do the job?

Motherboard: ABIT NF7-S nForce 2, Rev 2 ($107)
CPU: AMD ATHLON XP 2500 "Barton" 333 FSB PROCESSOR CPU- OEM ($85)
Cooling: Thermaltake SILENT BOOST ($35)
Memory: CORSAIR XMS, Low Latency (Twin Pack) 1GB(2 x 12MB) 2x(64MX64) PC-3200LL With Heat Spreaders. ($272)

The Case will be a ANTEC SONATA (TRUE380 380W Power Supply) and the Video will be a Radeon 9800PRO if that matters. Thanks.

Hmmm ... looks good. Should be looking at a 200MHz FSB hopefully, at least. I cant forsee any immediate problems with it, but then I havent used NForce2 or Barton myself.

I have the Abit NF7-S and XP 2500+, and I have it overclocked to 2.20GHz which is the speed the 3200+ is listed at. So its entirely possible. I had this thing OC'd to just above 2.3 before I started having problems. But thats mostly because I was raising the vCore and multiplier, and couldnt get the FSB past 168.

Im doing this with only 256MB of Kingston HyperX DDR333, so if you got some DDR400 (1GB worth too) you should be able to OC even higher.

I guess my concern is that since I will not be able to adjust the Multiplier (assuming it is locked) has anyone been getting good responses (+/- 2.2 GHz) by adjusting only the FSB and vCore.

I am currently running my Barton 2500+ at 2200 = 200x11. No problems.

I apologize for being new to overclocking but what does (200x11) mean?

200 FSB and 11X multiplier?

jlepri said:

I apologize for being new to overclocking but what does (200x11) mean?

Click to expand...

CPU Speed is determined by the FSB x Multiplier. The Multiplier on all new Bartons is locked at 11. Thus the usual speed of a barton 2500+ is:

166 (FSB) x 11 (multiplier) = 1833MHz

People have frequently managed to increase the FSB to 200MHz, thus:

200 x 11 = 2200MHz.

You should easily be able to run that rig at 3200+ speed and maybe even a little higher than that.

Even if you end up getting a locked Barton, just changing the FSB from 166 to 200 will take you to the exact same speed of a stock 3200+.