How far will a 600Mhz P3 go?

[LuckyStrik]

After years of service, I'm finally giving up my ancient 600Mhz P3. Since I have no use for it, I was wondering how far it can go in terms of overclocking-will it get to 1Ghz if I add the appropriate cooling? Apologies if this is a newbie question.

 

[musawi]

67% overclock. Very unlikely. You wont go far but overclock it none the less.

 

[LuckyStrik]

I think I'll use it as a test PC for future overclocking projects. It would probably also do good service in practicing building a PC I wish I had my old 486 for the same reason, even though it doesn't boot.

 

[NinjaWreck]

I think 800 mhz would be a good overclock for that chip.

 

[LuckyStrik]

How many degrees would the temperature rise by?

 

[NinjaWreck]

I would think 5°C-10°C depending on cooling.

 

[nipster]

if it is a 512k p3, i wouldnt expect anything over 650, if that, they were at the high end of their core speed expectations

if it is a 600/256/100, 800 should be possible if you have decent cooing. especially if you have a later stepping

if you have a 600/256/133, the limiting factor will be your motherboard, dont expect much because at 133 fsb, the motherboards and memory were already pushing their limits

 

[freeagent]

i agree... i got my 450 up to 524, my 800EB upto 845, and my 933EB up to 1.05 stable. cooling shouldnt really be too much of a factor with the p3s as long as you have good airflow in the case, my 933 @ 1050 idled at 18, maxed at like 25, and that was with a crusty old celeron coppermine 633 heatsink, and no thermal compound

 

[larva]

After years of service, I'm finally giving up my ancient 600Mhz P3. Since I have no use for it, I was wondering how far it can go in terms of overclocking-will it get to 1Ghz if I add the appropriate cooling? Apologies if this is a newbie question.

That all depends on what cpu you have. There are about 6 zillion varieties of P3-600s. Some have about 610MHz in them, some over 1GHz.

 

[Quailane]

Also it is a matter of fsb most of all I would think.

 

[Clevor]

After years of service, I'm finally giving up my ancient 600Mhz P3. Since I have no use for it, I was wondering how far it can go in terms of overclocking-will it get to 1Ghz if I add the appropriate cooling? Apologies if this is a newbie question.

Is it a Slot 1? If it's a legendary SL44Y, it can go way high. I picked up a used one with that stepping, and I got it to 157, 2-2-2- on a BE6II-RAID Rev. 2.0 with 2x256 PowMem PC-133. That's 942 mhz. I think it only needed 1.75 volts. That's waaay overachieving for a BO step. I'm talking 3D benchable here! It can go over 160 fsb/1 gig 2D stable except the Voodoo5 PCI card I'm running is already at 40 mhz bus with the 1/4th divider at 157 fsb. Forget about an AGP card, that bus is running 105 mhz!

I have another boxed SL44Y I got way back, never opened. I have these in mind for my dual Slot1 P4C-D board .

I have luck with 600Es. I also have an FCPGA BO step that also does 900-950 mhz. I got it from Intel as a replacement for a 300 PentiumII that died.

I'm on air BTW, I think I have the #2 score on the CPU database not on water. Generally to hit >900-950 mhz you need at least water.

 

[larva]

Also it is a matter of fsb most of all I would think.

That is the same issue, as the fsb is determined by which cpu you have.

 

[larva]

Is it a Slot 1? If it's a legendary SL44Y, it can go way high. I picked up a used one with that stepping, and I got it to 157, 2-2-2- on a BE6II-RAID Rev. 2.0 with 2x256 PowMem PC-133. That's 942 mhz. I think it only needed 1.75 volts. That's waaay overachieving for a BO step. I'm talking 3D benchable here! It can go over 160 fsb/1 gig 2D stable except the Voodoo5 PCI card I'm running is already at 40 mhz bus with the 1/4th divider at 157 fsb. Forget about an AGP card, that bus is running 105 mhz!

I have another boxed SL44Y I got way back, never opened. I have these in mind for my dual Slot1 P4C-D board .

I have luck with 600Es. I also have an FCPGA BO step that also does 900-950 mhz. I got it from Intel as a replacement for a 300 PentiumII that died.

I'm on air BTW, I think I have the #2 score on the CPU database not on water. Generally to hit >900-950 mhz you need at least water.

Clevor, forget the V5... lol. Matrox G400s, GF256s (SDR or DDR), or GF2s will indeed cope with the AGP rate at 157fsb. I ran my BF6's at 160fsb back in the day with no video difficulties.

I found 900MHz to be average for B0 step slot1 600e's. 942 is good for a B0, but not the best I've seen. I had several examples in the 975MHz range when they were still current.

C step is where they really took off though. I had no trouble isolating a slot1 700 that did 1050MHz without drama. P3B-F at 150fsb, 2-2-2 (powmen w/infineon) and a 1050MHz coppermine was the answer back then.

 

[Clevor]

Clevor, forget the V5... lol. Matrox G400s, GF256s (SDR or DDR), or GF2s will indeed cope with the AGP rate at 157fsb. I ran my BF6's at 160fsb back in the day with no video difficulties.

I found 900MHz to be average for B0 step slot1 600e's. 942 is good for a B0, but not the best I've seen. I had several examples in the 975MHz range when they were still current.

C step is where they really took off though. I had no trouble isolating a slot1 700 that did 1050MHz without drama. P3B-F at 150fsb, 2-2-2 (powmen w/infineon) and a 1050MHz coppermine was the answer back then.

I've run Radeon 8500s on the 440BX but they crapped out at 150 fsb or so (99 mhz AGP). Switched to a Voodoo5 PCI and no problem at 157. I will test a Geforce2 Ultra next but I believe they max out at 99 mhz.

As for the G400 Maxes, while I still have three cards, hell, even they were slow compared to the Voodoo5; it will take forever to complete 3DMark2001/2000, which I mainly use for stability testing. But I do believe they might have updated drivers to run 3DMark2003.

Another problem running >150 fsb is with 2x256 ram, particularly at 2-2-2- timings. I was surprised the PowMem PC133 could do it. I recently queried Mushkin about whether their $$$$ Level2 PC133 could do this ($100 per 256 MB stick), and they didn't reply - that tells you something.

I found some Tonicom PC166 last weekend in a used parts store - 2x256, what a find. Unfortunately they do >150 fsb, but only at 3-3-3- timings. In Everest, I notice they are rated PC166 but at 3-5-5-8. Oh well, they may find use on my TUSL at 166 fsb; I believe the board has adequate dividers.

 

[larva]

Hmm, I never had a GF2 Ultra. My 64MB Prophet2 (GTS) clocked to 235/400MHz, and I sat the Ultra out. But the GTS surely stood 160fsb on the BF6 with zero drama (and 2+ years as my primary card at 150fsb on the P3B-F, and the card is running in my friend's 3.0c right now... lol)

It sounds to me like you are very memory limited. The memory bus and the AGP bus are pretty closely coupled, and when the memory is getting sketchy it can affect the video card, and visa-versa. I was only running 256MB in my BX machines, that was a long time ago. Long before anybody worried with having 512MB.

 

[Clevor]

Hmm, I never had a GF2 Ultra. My 64MB Prophet2 (GTS) clocked to 235/400MHz, and I sat the Ultra out. But the GTS surely stood 160fsb on the BF6 with zero drama (and 2+ years as my primary card at 150fsb on the P3B-F, and the card is running in my friend's 3.0c right now... lol)

It sounds to me like you are very memory limited. The memory bus and the AGP bus are pretty closely coupled, and when the memory is getting sketchy it can affect the video card, and visa-versa. I was only running 256MB in my BX machines, that was a long time ago. Long before anybody worried with having 512MB.

Never owned a 64MB Prophet2, but I still keep two GF2 Ultras, both of which do 300/500 on stock cooling . Of course I got these about a year ago for $54 each (brand-new!), not when they arrived on the scene at $590 each.

Perhaps you are right on the ram, as I insist on 2x256 MB on my SDRAM boards, just as I insist on 2x512 on all current rigs. I also insist on 2-2-2- timings also, although if I can hit 166, 1:1 on the TUSL-2 with my Tualatins at 3-3-3-5 with the Tonicom, 3D stable, I'll take it .

 

[FIZZ3]

Interesting stuff here, just when I am playing around with my old P3 rig.

I've just completed a full system test on a (noise-oriented) watercooled CUSL2 (i815 using the 2/3 AGP divider) system with an Asus V7700 Geforce 2 GTS card. I was running at 160Mhz, which is ~107Mhz AGP--without any instability in 3Dmark, Sandra and P95. With the PCI at 40 though, SCSI controllers will begin sweating. The HD (old Maxtor beater) held up fine on the other hand.

About that PC133 rev2 from Mushkin: I have a single 256Mb stick of that stuff bought in 2000 or so. In retrospect its performance isn't mind-boggling. It does 166Mhz just barely with loose timings (333,7/9t). Tighter timings resulted in memtest errors. Did you really query Mushkin about this ancient product, Clevor?

 

[Clevor]

Interesting stuff here, just when I am playing around with my old P3 rig.

I've just completed a full system test on a (noise-oriented) watercooled CUSL2 (i815 using the 2/3 AGP divider) system with an Asus V7700 Geforce 2 GTS card. I was running at 160Mhz, which is ~107Mhz AGP--without any instability in 3Dmark, Sandra and P95. With the PCI at 40 though, SCSI controllers will begin sweating. The HD (old Maxtor beater) held up fine on the other hand.

About that PC133 rev2 from Mushkin: I have a single 256Mb stick of that stuff bought in 2000 or so. In retrospect its performance isn't mind-boggling. It does 166Mhz just barely with loose timings (333,7/9t). Tighter timings resulted in memtest errors. Did you really query Mushkin about this ancient product, Clevor?

Hmmm, doesn't the CUSL have better dividers for PCI/AGP? I had hoped the same for the TUSL, but it's basically the same board. Oh well.

I guess I may have to break out my GF2 Ultras to check, although I believe the wall is due to 2x256. Way harder to overclock two sticks SDRAM, a well-documented fact.

I did try 2x256 Mushkin Level2, back when they had heatspreaders. They did 150, 2-2-2-5. Didn't try higher as board was a P3B-F, which is it's max. They sold for $133 stick then.

Yes, I e-mailed Mushkin a month ago, as I was looking for backups to my 2x256 PowMem. As that ram is no longer popular (but still $100/stick!), the Level2s now come bare. I'd be happy with up to 157-160, 2-2-2, but they never replied to the e-mail. 'Guess they don't support overclocking, har har. Or the answer was 'No', they probably won't do it.

Oh well, I picked up 2x256 Tonicom PC-166 for $30/stick in that store.

 

[larva]

I was thinking i815 produced a lower AGP rate above 133fsb than does BX, but it's simply been too long for me to be certain on that point. I never really did a lot with i815, as BX was faster and supported twice as much ram.

 

[Clevor]

I was thinking i815 produced a lower AGP rate above 133fsb than does BX, but it's simply been too long for me to be certain on that point. I never really did a lot with i815, as BX was faster and supported twice as much ram.

Yes, I'm pretty sure the CUSL, which was the last of the P3 boards with 815E chipset, had a 1/3rd AGP divider, even 1/4. You could also run the ram lower with dividers. It had the annoying cold boot issue with BO steps though. I got rid of my boards when I picked up four TUSL-2s with RAID cheap, when they were being liquidated at the end of the P3 era. These boards were going for $275 a while back on Ebay (non-RAID, used). The ones with RAID are very rare, and two I have are brand-new boards.

On the subject of ram, I normally use Kingmax PC-150, a single 512 MB stick. This ram can do at least 150, 2-2-2-5, even though it is rated CAS3 at 150 mhz. Problem is the 512 sticks are sometimes recognized as 256 MB on CUSL boards (I had no problems). But on the 440BX chipset, 512 MB sticks are not supported (they are seen as 256). That's why I can't run them on the BE6II or P3B-F.