Attempting a first time overclock

[Huserx]

Hello All,

I have quite an old amd system, (and therefore expendable if I screw up)
I was thinking if possible I could try overclocking it (it would be my first)

As a learning experience for 1 and to see if I can make it just a little faster for 2..

Now I said it was old lol.. what I have is

A SOYO KT333 Dragon Plus Mainboard
An AMD XP 2800+ 512 cache Processor
1.25G of Kingston DDR400 PC3200 running at DDR333 (PC2700 speeds)
A Nvidia TI-4600 128M AGP 4x/8x (The board only supports 2x/4x)

So what I want to know is if I can do it where to begin what information is needed for guidance, multipliers, voltages for cpu, mem and agp?

I am not a novice when it comes to most hardware terms but I am a complete novice when it comes to overclocking, and understanding multipliers and voltages etc..

It is air cooled, at the moment with a stock cooler, I am looking to replace the stock cooler with a Scythe Katana (1st Gen) soon though.

The memory have copper ram coolers on them although probably not necessary.

The Nvidia PNY GeForce 4 TI-4600 has stock fan cooling also...
(Although the TI4200 it replaced had a fan mod on it after the stock fan died)

So your comments and thoughts (jeering aside) would be appreciated.

Thanks

Huserx

 

[QuietIce]

The first thing you need to check is that the PCI clock is locked. A LOT of the older boards don't lock that and it can wreak havoc on your HDD data if it isn't.

Do you happen to know which chipset that board has ...?

 

[TranceBear]

I seem to remember about 6 years ago on these forums there was alot on info about this setup. I wonder if that info can be searched? Have you tried to search my M/B mfg? Chipset? and CPU? Give that a try. My memory is not all that good from back then.

 

[Huserx]

The first thing you need to check is that the PCI clock is locked. A LOT of the older boards don't lock that and it can wreak havoc on your HDD data if it isn't.

Do you happen to know which chipset that board has ...?

The chipset is VIA KT333CF / 8235 chipset

and if I remember correctly there is not a PCI clock lock there is a PCI/AGP divider..

 

[Huserx]

I seem to remember about 6 years ago on these forums there was alot on info about this setup. I wonder if that info can be searched? Have you tried to search my M/B mfg? Chipset? and CPU? Give that a try. My memory is not all that good from back then.

I will try that as well thank you, and theres alot going on right now so I may have to put this on the back burner untill after the holidays

 

[QuietIce]

If yours has that you might be OK but you'll have to check the exact settings. Anything over ~37 MHz on the PCI usually results in corrupted HDD data. You're lucky, my VIA KT400 chipset doesn't have PCI control anywhere ...

 

[Vipersfate]

The first thing you need to check is that the PCI clock is locked. A LOT of the older boards don't lock that and it can wreak havoc on your HDD data if it isn't.

Do you happen to know which chipset that board has ...?

Now you tell me about the PCI clock. I was wondering why my old PIII system get spitting out OS's like nothing.

 

[QuietIce]

As I understand (and follow) you shouldn't install an OS and driver's on an OC anyway. Best bet is everything stock. Of course, that wouldn't stop data corruption if your PCI bus is running over ~37 MHz ...

 

[Huserx]

As I understand (and follow) you shouldn't install an OS and driver's on an OC anyway. Best bet is everything stock. Of course, that wouldn't stop data corruption if your PCI bus is running over ~37 MHz ...

Just to make sure I understand you correctly, are you saying install the OS at stock speeds then OC, do not OC then try to install a fresh OS..?

 

[muddocktor]

Yes, because that minimizes any installation problems when getting your OS up and running. Once you know that your OS is installed properly you can start pushing things. Since that 2800+ is a 166 fsb processor you will definitely be pushing the pci bus speed up when you push the fsb speed up. But I never had any corruption problems on my hard drives when the pci bus was at 37 MHz. And some IDE drives handle out of spec pci bus speeds much better than others. I had a couple of Maxtor IDE drives that were tolerant of way out of spec bus speeds. I even had one running on a 45 MHz pci bus and it worked fine for 2 months like that.

 

[Niku-Sama]

If yours has that you might be OK but you'll have to check the exact settings. Anything over ~37 MHz on the PCI usually results in corrupted HDD data. You're lucky, my VIA KT400 chipset doesn't have PCI control anywhere ...

you've said this on many posts that i have seen and i find it odd that a kt400 chipset doesent have a place to disable spread spectrum

my 7vaxp ultra had the ability with a kt400

 

[QuietIce]

It's been so long now I can't remember what I tried but I changed almost every sitting in BIOS trying to get the PCI below 37 MHz with the FSB cranked up ...