Overclocking water cooled athlon system, need help

[jammydodger]

Im planning to upgrade my system, and was thinking of overclocking once I do. I would like to get an athlonXP 2100+ or 2200+ and water cool the cpu with a system from innvotek. How far can these XPs be overclocked when used in conjunction with water cooling?

My intended system:
AthlonXP 2100+
512Mb corsair DDR333
Ge-Force2 GTS
Soundblaster live player 1024
100m/bs network card
20gig H/D
CD burner
52x CD drive

How powerfull a PSU would I need? Ive never overclocked before and dont know much about it, can I overclock just by changing the FSB without having to difficult things with the voltage? If I overclocked the FSB from 133Mhz to 166 would I have problems with my pci and graphics cards?


Why use windows when you can use doors?

 

[ezeenomad]

From all the posts, and the most recent THG article, the 2200 is a bad choice for dramatic overclocking.

 

[LancerEvolution7]

If you got the money to spend why not get a P4 2.2 to overclock? Those things overclock really well(average 2.8 mhz with stock cooling). With water cooling probably higher.

 

[jammydodger]

Ok if I were to use a pentium 4 2.26 at 533Mhz fsb how would I go about overclocking it? Could I overclock it just by increasing the fsb or would I have to do things with the voltage and multiplier?

Why use windows when you can use doors?

 

[Samoyed]

Most of the OC articles I have read and most of the OC I have done has involved raising the FSB speed. When I raised the voltage to the CPU it didnt seem to make any difference.

I do agree that the pent4 will OC better than the Athlon. What I have always done is just raise the FSB until the computer wont start Windows. At that point I know I went too far. Then I back down a notch until windows boots properly. IF so then I run a demanding game or run 3dMark2001 continuously for 1 hr. If it doesnt lock up then I probaby have found my Maximum OC speed for that particular CPU.

The biggest factor in OCing seems to be whether U get a "good" CPU by luck. Some are just better. Of course cooling, good ram and a decent MB are factors as well but in my experience the CPU seems to be the biggest factor.

I forgot to mention one other thing. DONT get a GF2!! Get a GF4 4200-4600. The GF2 is outdated and will choke your system.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Samoyed on 08/03/02 03:11 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[jammydodger]

I already have a GF2 and I'm gonna keep it for a while, I plan to wait for the NV30 before I upgrade my graphics card. But if I cn afford to I will get a Ge-Force4 Ti4200, apparently they can be overclocked to the speeds of the ti4400 without to much trouble. I've never overclocked before and was wondering how you increase the FSB in small increments? Do u need a specail app? Which would be better to get a p4 2.26ghz with 333mhz ddr ram or an athlonXp 2100+, I know the p4 will overclock a lot better but i cant afford RD ram and I thought DDR would limit the performance so that the overclocking would not make a huge difference.

Why use windows when you can use doors?

 

[Samoyed]

OC ing depends on the MB. My Gigabyte BX board had jumpers on the actual board that would run at 100, 112, 124 and 133. Not many choices. My Soyo had choices in the BIOS from 66- 170 at about 2-3 MHZ intervals. The SiS MB I have now has no jumpers or BIOS FSB settings other than default so I cant OC this Athlon 1800.

Make sure the board you get has the ability to change the FSB settings in the BIOS in 2-3 MHZ increments. Just ask " does this MB have an adujustable FDB speed in the bios"? If the answer is "Yes" then ask what the increments are.

I dont know if DDR 333 memory would limit how high U can OC a P4. I guess u could get DDR400 memory.

 

[Guest]

For AMD systems:
The biggest speed gains come from bumping up FSB speed. New motherboards have settings so that PCI and AGP slots stay at stock clock speed (good for stability) for popular FSB speeds. 166MHzFSB with DDR333 would be a nice boost. You might just get there without needing to unlock the multipliers, since you are using watercooling. Definitely go for a XP1700 or so instead of the faster one though, because they are the same thing but the XP2100 starts out already overclocked.

Also to get the most flexibility in overclocking one must unlock the multiplier. You can read about it on this site. Realistically this is what must be done to get absolute maximum overclocking performance.

Pentium 4's:
I haven't actually done any of these, but there are several things I've concluded from review benchmarks which might be useful.

No multiplier unlocking for the Intels anymore, FSB changes'll have to do ya. That's OK though because the new NW's are sooo ready to OC anyway.

Since you plan to overclock, RDRAM is clearly the way to go for maximum performance. A reasonable first step would be to shoot for a PC1066 based system. I'm guessing there are starting to be some sweet MB options aimed directly at people like you coming out lately.

Northwood chips are the way to go now. Reviews here showing them overclocking like mad.

PS it looks like Intel based has the potential for max speeds, some say they are more expensive though.

 

[LancerEvolution7]

For Athlon XP overclocking, I recommend the Soltek SL-DRV5(i currently own this). It offers fsb increments of +1 and voltage increments of .025.

DDR P4 Chipsets can be overclocked quite well. But just not as well as their RDRam counterparts. Still goes pretty high though.