P3B-F VCore

[Fear O. Carpet]

I am new to overclocking and am sort of feeling things out at the moment. I have an ASUS P3B-F, a PIII 600 with a golden orb hs and crappy PC100 RAM which is presumably what's preventing clocking above 115. At any rate, I fished through the CPU database and have wandered into this forum and have noticed that everyone (even other people with the same CPU / Mobo) has their Vcore set below 2.0V... In my BIOS, the lowest option is 2.05V and not knowing any better I set it to 2.10V a while ago, but it actually winds up around 2.16 - 2.20V. How are people setting sub 2.05V on P3B-F boards and am I risking having to remove my proc with a paper towel at 2.10V?

 

[Newbie_Doo]

Fear O. Carpet (Apr 26, 2001 12:26 a.m.):
I am new to overclocking and am sort of feeling things out at the moment. I have an ASUS P3B-F, a PIII 600 with a golden orb hs and crappy PC100 RAM which is presumably what's preventing clocking above 115. At any rate, I fished through the CPU database and have wandered into this forum and have noticed that everyone (even other people with the same CPU / Mobo) has their Vcore set below 2.0V... In my BIOS, the lowest option is 2.05V and not knowing any better I set it to 2.10V a while ago, but it actually winds up around 2.16 - 2.20V. How are people setting sub 2.05V on P3B-F boards and am I risking having to remove my proc with a paper towel at 2.10V?

Let's take this one step at a time...FIRST go HERE and download the latest BIOS to a floppy with the Aflash program. your board has an older BIOS revision that DOES NOT SUPPORT the coppermine Vcores. Do this on a different machine before you fry that poor chip.

You are risking that chip every second it is running at 2.16-2.20v.

Boot your machine with the flash floppy, following the instructions that ASUS gave you when you downloaded the BIOS, and flash the BIOS to the newer version that supports the lower Vcores.

Once you have the lower voltages, drop down to something reasonable like 1.65v and slowly inch up as you raise speed, but not until you either put some Arctic Silver on that heatsink, or get a better heatsink and use some AS with the better one. The Golden Orb is barely adequate for the PIII-600 at default, much less overclocked.

After you have done these things, come back here and post your component setup so we can go from there. DO THE BIOS REVISION RIGHT NOW.

I hate to be so blunt but it is for your own good.

E-mail me if you have any other Q?s

Anthony

 

[Newbie_Doo]

Oh...and Welcome to the Overclockers.com Forum. I hope you like us enough to stay around for a while.

 

[Fear O. Carpet]

Thank you and I do appritiate your candidness... I am new to this and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I have spend years triying to squeeze performance out of my computer by tweaking the software, but this hardware tweaking is new to me. I will get that BIOS update ASAP (to put your mind at ease, I'm on my laptop right now), but I would like to now if anyone has had any experience flashing ASUS BIOS... The reason I have the mobo I have now is because I tried to flash my old BIOS (it was a SuperMicro and a pile of crap) and ended up with a computer that wouldn't even boot far enough to reload to backup image... I bought the Orb because my proc has allways run hot (probably the voltage thing huh?), but haven't noticed any difference in anything except the noise level... I have a tube of Arctive Silver II in the mail as I type.

 

[Fear O. Carpet]

Newbie_Doo (Apr 26, 2001 09:18 p.m.):

Fear O. Carpet (Apr 26, 2001 12:26 a.m.):
I am new to overclocking and am sort of feeling things out at the moment. I have an ASUS P3B-F, a PIII 600 with a golden orb hs and crappy PC100 RAM which is presumably what's preventing clocking above 115. At any rate, I fished through the CPU database and have wandered into this forum and have noticed that everyone (even other people with the same CPU / Mobo) has their Vcore set below 2.0V... In my BIOS, the lowest option is 2.05V and not knowing any better I set it to 2.10V a while ago, but it actually winds up around 2.16 - 2.20V. How are people setting sub 2.05V on P3B-F boards and am I risking having to remove my proc with a paper towel at 2.10V?

Let's take this one step at a time...FIRST go HERE and download the latest BIOS to a floppy with the Aflash program. your board has an older BIOS revision that DOES NOT SUPPORT the coppermine Vcores. Do this on a different machine before you fry that poor chip.

You are risking that chip every second it is running at 2.16-2.20v.

Boot your machine with the flash floppy, following the instructions that ASUS gave you when you downloaded the BIOS, and flash the BIOS to the newer version that supports the lower Vcores.

Once you have the lower voltages, drop down to something reasonable like 1.65v and slowly inch up as you raise speed, but not until you either put some Arctic Silver on that heatsink, or get a better heatsink and use some AS with the better one. The Golden Orb is barely adequate for the PIII-600 at default, much less overclocked.

After you have done these things, come back here and post your component setup so we can go from there. DO THE BIOS REVISION RIGHT NOW.

------------------


OK, I ran Aflash and revised my BIOS to 1006, which it says supports coppermine Vcores, PIII 850s and what not... I still don't have the option to drop below 2.05V. Here some info on my 'puter if that'll help:
CPU:
Intel Pentium III; Family 6; Model 7; Core Stepping kC0; Technology 0.25 micro; Stepping 3; Brand ID 0; Package, Slot 1 SECC2; Core Voltage 2.11v; Cpu Freq 601.4; Clock Mult 100.2; Original CPU/FSB, 600/100; L1 D-Cache 16kb; L1 l-Cache 16kb; L2 Cache 512kb; L2 Latency 1; L2 Freq 300.7; L2/Core 1/2

On an ASUS FB3-F BIOS rev 1006 (05/16/00) with a 256mb PC133 DIMM

Also, I'm aquiring a PIII 850E from a friend's upgrade- should I worry about sticking it on this board until I get the Vcore thing sorted out?


Tanks again.

 

[FrankMasterFlash]

Your P3 600 default voltage is 2.05v. You will not harm you P3 600 classic at this voltage. That is also why it won't go below 2.05. In the CPU database the first one is actually in the wrong category and all the rest are around 2.05 volts. The V core should not be a problem with the P3 850 it will default to 1.65 or 1.7v depending on which one you get. If you do get the 850 check to see what stepping it is cB0(1.65v) or cC0(1.7v). If it is cB0 you should be fine with your BIOS, but if it is cC0 you will need the BIOS 1007 beta that supports the cC0 stepping. One more thing, go for a better cooler than the Golden orb if you want to overclock very far at all.

 

[klosters64a]

If your P3 is a Katmai, in SECC2 form factor(242-pins on the bottom of a long edge that fits into a Slot 1 "trench") its Spec Core Voltage is 2.05v.

If it's a ~2" x 2" green square PCB with a little blue slug on one side and a lot of little brass pins on the other, it's a Coppermine processor. Coppermines also are available "stuck" on a SECC2 242-pin PCB. Your Bios will ID a P3E(Coppermine) and offer you a different menu of Core Voltages than it does with Katmai's. 1.6v to 1.85v, if I remember right. For some reason, Asus P2B's and P3B-F's give you .05 volts more than you select in Bios. C'est la vie. Always select the lowest Core Voltage that will run the CPU at your desired OC.

P3B-F's have a Slot 1, if you don't get a FC-PGA P3 in SECC2 242-pin form factor, you'll need to purchase a Slocket to be able to use Coppermine aka FC-PGA processors with your mainboard. These have a Socket 370 that holds FC-PGA CPU's. The Slocket is then inserted into the Slot 1, and voyla, like them say it in France, you're running a Coppermine on your P3B-F. I've used both Iwill Slocket II's and Asus S370-133 Slockets on my P3B-F. I suggest avoiding generic Slockets--they don't perform well, and will only end up in the trash. Why go cheap--when it isn't cheap?

The P3B-F is arguably the finest 440BX mainboard ever made. Sure, 440BX's have limitations. Raising the FSB above 133 Mhz requires a lot of thought toward wise hardware purchases. And the AGP slot is only capable of x2--and it will run at 2/3(above 66 Mhz Front Side Bus) of Front Side Bus-period. I strongly suggest reading this article before buying a new AGP Vidcard for your P3B-F:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1270 .

Also, GeForce2 Vidcards are said to be a no-go on P3B-F's as well as a lot of other older 440BX mobo's. Dunno if this is gospel, or not. I bought a GF 256(the original GeForce)from the list of winners at 89 and 98 Mhz AGP Bus in the "133 BX" article at Anandtech to be safe.

It's a lot to digest, sorry. The 440BX chipset remains the world champ of PC performance. ~Three years old--and Intel still can't replace it with an improved chipset. Makes you go "hmm."

*Edit. Banish the GORB and all other Orbs from your CPU. They're OK as Vidcard GPU coolers. They simply don't cut the mustard for OCing CPU's.

 

[Fear O. Carpet]

The P3 I'm getting is a "PIII 850E Slot 1 100MHz FSB", so it should be happy in my P3B-F with rev. 1006, right?

Speaking of graphics cards, the reason I have the ASUS board is because I upgraded my ATI Rage 128 on my old SuperMicro mobo (hey, it was really cheap) to a Prophet II MX, but the SuperMicro (still a 440BX) couldn't deal with the AGP 2X... I looked into that before I bought the graphics card and the SuperMicro website said the BIOS update would add AGP 2X support (?!), but instead it just turned my mobo into a square frisbee that would cost more than I paid for it to fix. That is if the random vendor in the back of Computer Shopper hadn't gone under, but hey, it was so cheap I didn't really mind replacing it with the ASUS board.

 

[Fear O. Carpet]

Oh yeah, being the wealth of well articulated information you guys are (a refreshing thing on today's anyoneiwthamacandAOL WWW) and seeing as how every single reply has had a PS about ditching the GORB, what should I look into? I'm quite adept at woodworking and general tinkering, but haven't ever chopped into metal. I do however have access to the student shop in the chem dept, but I'm not sure if I want to risk putting something I made in charge of my CPU's life... I was thinking of just plopping down some dough for an AquaStealth II... I feel comfortable hacking into my case and have access to some crazy pure water that wouldn't conduct a lightning bolt, not to mention a variety of would be coolents that are unfortunately crazy flamable... That said, I would love to hear what you guys think.