HOW TO O/C

[Cain]

Hello all how are you doing? I have a few questions for all of you AMD owners out. I am really considering making my next purchase soon but I have never owned AMD and have not really read much about AMD. What I want to know is what wopuld be a good T-bird mobo and what T-bird is good for overclocking. Also what I would like to know are all tbirds unlocked or do you have to do something to them to unlock them. The last time I could actually change my multiplier was a long time ago with intel.

Thanks for the help Cain 101

Abit BE6 Celeron 633 @ 998 vcore 2.2
128 mb pc133
Voodoo 5 5500

 

[Rob Cork]

Go for one of the new KT133a mobos - they'll allow you to run a proper 133MHz fsb (kinda 266 due to the tbirds dual-pumped bus), giving much better performance. As the multipliers for tbirds at the moment are set for a 100MHz fsb, to use a 133MHz fsb without drastically ocing the cpu you'll need to unlock it - apparently the new 1.2gig tbirds are all unlocked, but anything slower is locked. Use the 'pencil trick' - there's posts all over the forum about it, and here's a couple of articles: http://www.cotty.btinternet.co.uk/unlock.htm and http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/00q3/000711/index.html
Just connect the four L1 bridges if you have a mobo that allows you to change the multiplier - ignore the bits of the Tom's Hardware article that say otherwise. For a good mobo I suggest either the ABIT KT7a-RAID, or the new Iwill KK266 - it's got a couple of rave reviews, one from this site, and I trust it

If you can afford it go for a fast tbird, at least 1gig or higher - you should be able to oc pretty well with good aircooling, like an Alpha PEP66 or Globalwin FOP38. You may have noticed the news recently on the oc.com homepage about new fast tbirds ocing very well at default voltage - something to keep in mind when deciding what speed to buy - http://www.overclockers.com/tips329/