Is it possible to OC a Duron 950 w/ a K7S5A MB?

[Guest]

I just got a Duron 950/ECS motherboard combo at Fry's and was hoping that I could push it to atleast 1Ghz. I can handle penciling the L2 bridges but is there anything else I would need to do in order to overclock the Duron? I'm hoping that I won't need to do much aside from penciling or maybe downloading a BIOS capable of adjusting the multiplier. I would appreciate any help.

 

[Guest]

Can someone please help me out? The only bus speeds that I can pick right now are 100 and 133 but 133 doesn't boot up for me even though it worked fine with my Pentium II 300 setup.

 

[girish]

100->133 is too big a leap. remember every increment of the FSB raises the core speed by multiple of the multiplier. that means raising the speed by 33 MHz would result in teh core speed to be raised by 313 MHz which is way too high.

you can raise the core speed by adjusting the multiplier so tat you can bump the speed in steps of 16.6 MHz with each step of 0.5, dont switch the FSB at all.

girish

<font color=red>Nothing is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

Why was my 4 year old Pentium II 350 and MB able to run at 133? I was able to run it at 467 w/o any modifications or problems at all. I guess I thought the Duron would be just as easy but I can't overclock it at all. My ECS board only allows FSB adjustments. I am very disappointed. What AMD chip and MB can I buy that will allow me to overclock without any physical modifications? I will be happy if I can overclock an extra 100mhz through BIOS only. After that, I would be willing to lose my warranty for a bit more.

 

[girish]

well, all this is to do with *binning*!

This what AMD and intel does while making the CPUs. If you think they manufacture batches of different processor speeds each, it isnt. Actually, every processor starts to be the fastest. There is a range of speeds a batch aims for, say 1 GHz. Now when the wafer is fabricated and each die is cut, it is tested for maximum gate switching speed, and allowing a safety margin of 10~30% they are stamped accordingly and sent out. For example, a chip found running at 1200 MHz is labelled as 1 GHz, one running at 1000 is labelled as 800. Sometimes even a 1 GHz capable die is labelled to a much lower value, to maintain the ASP (Average Selling Price) of the processor. if you get one of this you are lucky, but still they gurantee it would run at the rated speed, at what highest speed it would run is not known until one actually tries it. And it does depend on each piece, even if it is from the same batch and stepping!

You can get these speed ranges from the stepping charts publiched by the manufacturers. What you can derive from those is that there is certain range of speeds for the same stepping. That means the slowest processor in that range has a potential to run at the highest speed! Although it might not reach that high levels, it would certainly run much faster. Faster processor have less and less overclockability because they are already approaching the max limit of that range.

Your Pentium-II 350 happenes to be the slowest in the breed of 0.25 micron processor, capable of running at much higher speeds. Duron 950 is already close to 1 GHz limit around which its speeds stayed for a long time before a 1.1G Duron came around. Probabely thats the reason why the Duron dint overclock to your expectations.

girish


<font color=red>Nothing is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>