Thunderbird Overclocking Help Please

[hibner]

I have an Athlon 1.4 processor and an Asus a7v133 mobo with 832 MB of Crucial PC 133 Ram. I am running in jumperless mode. When I try to overclock in the bios and reboot, I just get black screen and have to reset the CMOS. I have heard rumors that it can be done on this mobo. Someone please help a poor sole to broke to upgrade (again).

 

[repo man11]

Hello, and Welcome to the forums!

I just did a quick Google, and according to the article Here that board is capable of 150 MHz frontside bus.

T-birds are notoriously hot, so you'll need some good cooling to get much more than stock out of it. The good news on your T-bird is that it is probably factory unlocked, so you'll be able to change the multiplier with no trouble.


You'll have to increase the speed a little at a time to see how much you can get out of it with the cooling you now have, and your present PSU.

How are your temperatures and voltage levels at stock speeds?

 

[hibner]

Thank you for your gracious welcome (and link) repo man11,

This is the first time ever that I have tried to overclock. I am looking for a little boost not an unstable speed demon.

I have a 400 watt power supply, 2 big fans, and at stock speed my athlon 1.4 runs at 130 degrees and 1.8 volts core. I had a few questions.

Do I need to set the jumpers on the board? I tried it jumperless and I reboot and the screen goes black.

How do I unlock the darn thing, or tell if it is locked?

Is there a god? Why the platypus?

Do I need to change the voltage?

Man, am I a Newbie?

 

[Vampiregabe]

Hibner,

130F is warm, but not too bad, I think. The 1400 Tbird is most certainly unlocked, I had one and it was. The best way to see is to change the mulitplier from 10.5 to say 9 in the bios and see if it boots. If it does, it is unlocked.

What speed is your ram? Are you running older pc 2100? If so this may be the reason you are getting the black screen. PC 2700 256 is running about $50 at Newegg.com right now, you may have to upgrade. My old PC 2100 would not do +1 mhz w/o locking and giving a black screen.

While the t'bird was a great chip in the day, it is alas showing it's age.

I wish you luck!


*Edited for spelling*

 

[repo man11]

I agree with Vampiregabe. But your PC133 memory (this is an SDRAM board Gabe) may be a limiting factor in Front Side Bus overclocking. But it may be good for the 150 MHz that your board is supposed to be good for. I would use the jumper to bump the I/O voltage to 3.45 volts.

Since you only want to bump it up a little, I would just try bumping up the FSB a little. Just try 1 or 2 MHz increase at first, to see if that will allow you to POST.

According to that article, the jumperless mode works fine, so you shouldn't have a problem.

How are your +12 and +5 volt lines while the compuiter is running?

 

[Vampiregabe]

But your PC133 memory (this is an SDRAM board Gabe) may be a limiting factor in Front Side Bus overclocking.

Oops. Scratch the DDR Commnt.

Still newer PC133 could out perform the RAM that was manufactured when he originally bought it.

 

[dalilman52]

if u cant get the thing to run changed multipliers, do the pencil trick!! doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo..hah neways...

as someone said earlier u REALLY need better cooling, t-birds are hot as hell and need some high-end cooling, like maybe a slk-900 or something else made by thermalright, but since u are on a budget, u prolly cant do that...but my t-bird 900 ran at like 53c full load, if u have ne better than stock cooling, it would be better

o yeah, and one other thing, t-birds dont OC too well, so u may wanna lower the multiplier to say around 7 b4 try to raise the multiplier, if not, it prolly wont be able to handle the speed increase

 

[repo man11]

Even with the cooling you have, you should at least be able to raise the FSB up a couple of steps, and have it boot and run.

The way it generally goes is that you overclock a little, and then find you are limited by your cooling. So you upgrade your cooling, and then find that your PSU is wilting under the load. So you upgrade that. Then you find your memory is holding you back. So you upgrade that.

Then you decide that your motherboard is too old....

After getting the hang of pushing the envelope with it as is, you may want to find out what CPU this motherboard is capable of supporting. I have an Abit KT7A which has the same KT133A chipset. Though it doesn't officially support it, it works with an XP1600 Palomino. And with some quality PC133, it has run 154 MHz FSB stable. I nearly broke 10,000 in 3D Mark with a Ti4200.

There is a thread in the Abit motherboards section where someone explains how he was able to use an XP2100 in a KT7, which has the even older KT133 chipset.

A newer chip could really boost your performance, and your overclocking potential.

You will probably want to take the HSF off of the Northbridge chip, and maybe lap it, and definitely use at least some white thermal grease, or better yet a quality thermal compound like Artic Silver. If it is anything like my KT7A, it only had a tiny dab of white thermal grease from the factory, which has long since been baked into a little dot of chalky powder. A too hot northbridge will limit your FSB speeds for sure.

 

[hibner]

Thanks for everything guys. I am now running at 1512 mhz on my 1.4 t-bird. I thought that I had to set my FSB at 133. Uh duh.

I bumped the V i/o to 3.45, and changed set multiplier to 14 and the FSB to 108. This set my ram to 144 mhz. I also set the core voltage to 1.8. Should I go to 1.85? My +12 v line in at 12.9 and my +5v line is at 4.7.

And after a few games of UT2003 and some Microstation (AutoCAD), I'm stable and still under 130 degrees (55 c).