PII 333 Overclocking...Newbie Needs Advice

[NeoMoses]

I have a PII 333, and from the looks of it, it's a good candidate for overclocking. It's an SL2WY made in week 37 in Malaysia. Looking through the DB, there seems to be many people who have taken this chip to 500 MHz and beyond. I'd like to try my hand at it, too.

(Un)fortunately, all I have is a 440LX mobo with a fried bios. I'd like to get a better mobo, probably a 440BX, so I can find the processor's full potential. What are the best boards for both overclocking with this processor and where can I get one? (Ebay/Yahoo?)

This will be my first time overclocking an Intel chip, and I'm having a hard time finding any good sites explaining how to o/c a PII. Anybody know any good sites for this?

Finally, I'm sure I'll need a good HSF for this. Again, all I seem to find is info on PIII/IV and Athlon cooling solutions. I need suggestions here too. Luckily, tomshardware.com has good archives, so I'm not totally in the dark.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[DAppel]

Try ANY ABIT board.

Until then, you can play a little with your LX. If your PII is multiplier locked, you can get 416 MHz from it (5x83MHz). If it's multiplier unlocked, well then you can get the full potential from the chip in your current board.
It sure won't be as fas as in a BX, but it would allow you to analise if it's a real overclocker, or if it's a real dog. If it overclocks well, then it may be worth buying another mobo. If it doesn't, then forget the mobo and use the money for a real system (AMD please).

 

[JuDgE_DrEaD]

Well these chips are pretty limted since all you can do is raise your FSB, all the P2 starting with 333 are internally locked, this should be quite easy since you just raise your vcore as you go along. yes you need a good HSF(im not an expert in this field tho)

 

[DAppel]

Didn't read the FRIED BIOS line before.

Forget what a wrote. It doesn't apply in your case.

IMO it is worth buying a VIA board. Not as fast as the BX, but if your chip happens to be multiplier-unlocked you could use extremely high FSBs.

Did you see the VIA-based DDR board ? Forgot the manufacturer, but it did very well in the benchmarks. Since your last board was a LX, I presume your RAM is PC66, and you are really NOT going to get the full potential of your chip with PC66 RAM.

Buying a DDR board and RAM should give you a good base system to buy a PIII. If you decide not to stick with Intel, you would allready have DDR RAM for use in a Thunderbird system. No need to buy RAM twice.

 

[DAppel]

Actually, I *think* there were built some unlocked 333.

 

[NeoMoses]

Could you be a little more specific on the VIA mobos? I'd like to look into that, since it's a little hard finding 440BX's.

Also, does anyone have a good tutorial on applying a new HSF to the PII?

 

[tonsku]

My friend has PII 333 and it is really unlocked version. I just tested it is
possible to overclock this chip by chancing multiplier. It works fine at
400MHz, even 450MHz but needs more cooling with this speed.
first I tested 4x100MHz, and I was very surprised when I changed
multiplier to 4,5x!! It worked at 450MHz!!!!!!! So it can't be locked chip.

 

[Zuck Gou :)]

Well it CAN be a locked chip, but theres a possibility it isn't.

 

[Shadow ÒÓ]

Moved post to Intel Motherboards.