Old School P4 1.8a Northwood OCing

I know its awhile to wait for this but i built this setup almost 5 years ago for school and have never overclocked it. I plan to build a new rig soon but i would like to try my first OCing on this one first. Im kinda a newbie and trying to raise the FSB slowly.... this may be a stupid question but i assumed in the BIOS where it says CPU/PCI Frequentcy is the FSB. It starts at 100X33. Now what is the 33 for that ratio? And what levels is it safe too? Also how high can i bring the FSB up before having to OC my RAM or adjust anything else? My specs are in my profile which would help.

Well first of all raising the FSB will overclock your entire system unless you have some kind of motherboard w/ a PCI or AGP bus lock to isolate your overclock to mainly a FSB CPU/Memory speed increase. I am not very familiar w/ your particular motherboad but if it reads as you say CPU/PCI frequency under the same BIOS setting then I assume it does not have any kind of PCI/AGP bus lock which will significantly reduce your overclock potential. From the parts listed in your signature the PCI bus will definately be your limiting factor as far as how far you can overclock. The BIOS setting you are referring for the CPU/PCI Frequency 100/33 is exactly that, the 100 is your FSB speed and the 33 is the PCI bus speed, with out a PCI lock as you increase the FSB the PCI bus also increases which is a bad thing if you go just one Mhz to far on the PCI bus you could severely corrupt your HDD data. I would say the safest overclock for you is the way you are approaching it by moving one step at a time checking for stability/heat issues at each level of increase in FSB. I would NOT overclock the FSB any further than to the point at which the PCI bus has reached 38Mhz to be safe. Some people say you can go a little more or less but I have found that just about any piece of PCI bus based hardware I have used runs stable and fine up to about 38Mhz. Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.

The P4S533 uses a SIS chipset, so there will be no PCI lock. That means that somewhere above 112-115 FSB, the PCI bus will be too far out of spec. But... it's possible your 1.8A will do 133 FSB, if so, then your PCI bus will be back in spec. Download and run a free program called CPU-Z and see what stepping revision you have with that Northwood.

Right now its Running at 115/38 at 2073MHz completely stable. I do have the option in my BIOS to set it to 133/33 but it doesnt boot on this setting and gets hung up. Anything i could do to get alittle more out of it? The stepping is 4 and revision is B0. Anything else u need to know?

Ok, nice going. Your O/C of 115/38 is good. Might be tough to reach 133/33 stable with a B0 stepping. First, check load CPU temp. If it's below 50 degrees C., then maybe we can raise vcore to 1.55v and see if that will help boot at 133 FSB. I would not go higher than 1.6v with stock air cooling and only that if your temps are reasonable.

Edit: Ok, I see now that you do have Thermaltake Volcano 7+ heatsink. What do you have for case ventilation?

The load temp is the temp as soon as the computer starts right? Its about 46 deg if thats it. I have 2 80mm fans in the front and 2 80mm fans in the back. The thermaltake setting is on med since i never OCed it before. I can push that to high no problem.

Well if you want to go to the max try a vcore socket modd or on the processor itself to try and get it to boot stable at FSB/PCI 133/33 by increasing the vcore voltage. I'll post back later w/ data shhet info. on the vid settings and pin locations.

Load CPU temp is not when you first boot. Try running a program that stresses the system, like PCmark2004 or Sandra Burn-in wizard and pull up temps while it's running those programs.

You have good case ventilation. Kick the fans up to high and try bumping up the voltage.

i ran Prime 95 and the load temps were higher then i thought theyd be. They were around the mid 50s. Could there be a reason for this? Its averaging around 54 hittin 55 ocasionally. Is that dangerous if it thats the load temp consistently?

Mid 50's is about as high as I'd take a Northwood. Probably won't damage it as long as you use low voltage, but any temp above that could cause instability. Maybe you need a higher CFM fan on the CPU heatsink? What thermal paste did you use?

I have one and it went up to 2.4GHZ totally stable. It could go 2.56 but not so stable.

I still have it, but the pins were so screwed up when I tried to sell it...might still work if I can somehow get the pins back to where they belong.

watch out for SNDS - sudden northwood death syndrome

The later stepping overclocked great. I had a 2.0A C1 stepping that would do 3.4 gig, but my first 2.0A B0 stepping would only do 2.5 gig. The older B0 stepping 1.8A would often do 2.4 gig if you gave 'em more voltage, but you need better cooling for that.

I just bought 1.8A Northwood on Ebay for about $15 shipped. Got it yesterday and popped it on an Albatron 845 PEV anniversary board to post it. I was too anxious to look to see what I did with my thermal paste so I just mounted my TT Spark 7+ and booted it at default. Curiousity got the best of me so I tried 133 fsb for starters and it booted into XP. Went to 150 FSB, booted and went surfing for awhile. Couldn`t help myself, went to 160 FSB and it booted (at default core voltage, no thermal paste) but not for long. Right now I`m running it at 150 fsb (2.7 ghz), still at default Vcore, no thermal paste, and it seems to be stable. Not a bad chip for common surfer useage. I`m starting to get curious enough to dig out the thermal paste and see what it`ll do air-cooled.

I just bought 1.8A Northwood on Ebay for about $15 shipped. Got it yesterday and popped it on an Albatron 845 PEV anniversary board to post it. I was too anxious to look to see what I did with my thermal paste so I just mounted my TT Spark 7+ and booted it at default. Curiousity got the best of me so I tried 133 fsb for starters and it booted into XP. Went to 150 FSB, booted and went surfing for awhile. Couldn`t help myself, went to 160 FSB and it booted (at default core voltage, no thermal paste) but not for long. Right now I`m running it at 150 fsb (2.7 ghz), still at default Vcore, no thermal paste, and it seems to be stable. Not a bad chip for common surfer useage. I`m starting to get curious enough to dig out the thermal paste and see what it`ll do air-cooled.

I am finally getting it to run at 2.4ghz using 133/33 and 1.575 vcore. I havent done a stress test yet but so far its running fine and at a fine temp. Is 1.575 volts dangerous for me setup at all? I want to find out before I try doing a stress test. Then maybe even trying to get it faster slowly upping the FSB.

Most Northwoods can handle 1.6v as long as temps are not excessive. You will find that some mobos undervolt while others overvolt. So, what you set in the BIOS might not be actual vcore. Check to see what actual measured vcore is at idle and at load.

using MBM5 at idle my temp is 36 and the vcore is 1.63V is that too high?

Sometimes Asus motherboards overvolt at idle and undervolt at load. Check to see what your vcore is at full load.