Can an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.1Ghz be OCd???

[mn4az]

I have an two old systems. Both have 512MB Kingston SDRAM PC133 and a ABIT KT7 Raid Motherboard. I have one AMD 1.1GHz Thunderbird and another 800 MHz T-Bird in these boxes. Simple question. What's the best way to OC them and what could I expect for a gain. Or would I just fry everything?

TIA



<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mn4az on 12/03/03 09:37 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[psykoikonov]

You'll need to unlock them to get any real gains. The 1.1 should run nicely at 1.4GHz. If they're not unlocked try slowly raising the front side bus until instabilities occur and then back off a few MHz. The multi on the 1.1 is either 8 or 8.5. 8x149=1192MHz and 8.5x149=1266MHz. If you can lock your AGP/PCI bus you may be able to go higher, if not then do not cross into the 150 range or risk death to your hdd controller or hdd's. Almost for sure you're Ram will limit you. Note: Be very careful as both of your CPU's have zero thermal protection and run fairly hot, just keep an eye on those temps and try to stay below 65C (I think for T-Bird temp is rated upto 95C).

Psyko


<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=421&s=205efc501496823a64ba7fbd37152ff2" target="_new">Psyko's Rig</A>

 

[phsstpok]

Your motherboard limits your options. The KT7 has the VIA KT133 chipset which won't run 133 Mhz FSB. Officially, the chipset only supports 100 Mhz FSB.

You might be able to hit 116 Mhz FSB but that's rare on the KT7. (Mine would only hit 106 Mhz).

Having a limited FSB means you have to overclock by increasing your multiplier. No Athlon Thunderbirds were unlocked so you have to close the L1 bridges first. You can use the once popular pencil trick (worked good enough for me) or you can use conductive paint. Either way it's easy because you don't have to protect the cuts the way you do with Palominos or Thoroughbreds.

Once you unlock your Thunderbird you can increase your multiplier up to 12.5x. The KT7 will interperet 12.5x as 13X. This is the highest multiplier you can access with an unlocked Thunderbird as the 5th multiplier bit is not supported. (14X is supported on a "locked" Thunderbird but you would have to mod a lot of bridges on the CPU to make it work on your Thunderbird 1.1).

In any case, you will need a good cooler to obtain a decent overclock as Tbirds produce a lot of heat.

Even with the motherboard and CPU limitations your max overclock would be a very nice 1506 Mhz (13 x 116) but that's in theory. You might not reach 116 Mhz for FSB or your Thunderbird (200) might not be able to reach 1500+ mhz.

I think 1400 Mhz is perfectly do-able.

There's another option but it's probably not worth it.

A nice upgrade for the KT7 is to drop in an Tbred B XP2400+. This processor has the 5th multiplier bit enabled by default and when you clear CMOS the KT7 will POST at 20 x 100 Mhz = 2000 Mhz. This is the same as the default speed for an XP2400+ except FSB would be 100 Mhz (200) instead of 133 Mhz (266).

[Yes, I've actually done this upgrade myself but only for one day because I had a better motherboard for the processor].

There are other possibilities including bridge mods, pin mods, wire mods, and motherboard mods using any unlocked Tbred B or Barton.

XP2400+ is easiest because you can just drop it into the KT7 and boot to 2000 Mhz, no mods necessary.

<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 12/05/03 11:01 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mn4az]

You talk about a good cooler. What do you mean by that? Sorry for the very rookie question....

 

[phsstpok]

Good cooler = Good HSF = Good Heatsink/Fan.

A poor cooler won't let you overclock much at all. A good one will let you get a fairly decent overclock. You don't even have to spend a lot of money for good coolers.

One of the best low cost heatsinks is the Spire/Speeze Falconrock II (about $12 USD). It comes with a weak fan which is really only good for stock speeds. However, add a decent, more powerful fan and it quickly becomes a good to excellent cooler (depending on how powerful a fan you add)[<-edit for clarity].

There are coolers that do a little better but they cost a lot more.

Going really cheap, some of the other Spire/Speeze heatsinks perform quite well (or so I hear). They are priced ridiculously low (about $8 USD) and you don't need to change the fans to do some decent overclocking. They are a bit noisy but they work well. I forget the models offhand but basically any of the models with a copper insert are a safe bet.

There are some Glacial Tech HSFs that work well (but some that are awful). I use the GlacialTech Igloo 2500 (not the PRO), not very loud yet OK for overclocking, good enough to run my Thunderbird C 1.0 at 1.5 Ghz and my Tbred B XP1700+ at 2.1 Ghz but definitely not what you would call an excellent HSF. It was a good compromise between cooling and noise.
I would have chosen a Falconrock II but I wasn't sure it would fit my motherboard. I later learned, too late, that it would.

Anyway, a good cooler should be for overclocking.


<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 12/08/03 02:04 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[mn4az]

I will look tomorrow and post back what the chip is.

 

[Crashman]

AXIA and AVIA were well known to overclock very high.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[mn4az]

Alrighty then... here's what I got... BTW nobody said I should stop at Walgreens and buy a magnifying glass. Damn... those numbers on the core are small! Or maybe I am blind..... or old... ANYWAY...

A1100AMS3B
ASHHA0126MPMW

I have a HSF fan (Cool Master) and I honestly can't remember if I purchased it or if it came with the CPU.

So... here's a $81 question. Would I better off purchasing a AMD 2400+ (Tbred B) from newegg for $81 or try and over clock this puppy and if so what do you speculate I could squeeze out of the thing? I noticed that my temp was 49C when it was just sitting around not doing anything. I am not a gamer, but am going to get into some video editing.

BTW there is a great link at the OC forum (http://forum.oc-forums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=158672) confirming what you said about the AMD 2400+ working with the KT7 Raid (non A) board.

TIA

 

[Crashman]

I don't remember saying anything about the XP2400+. It might work but would default to 1500MHz and show up as an XP1800+ at best in BIOS. Of course most of these are unlocked in the upward direction, so you can increase the multiplier. If I recall correctly, 15x is the same setting as 8x, so setting it to 9x should get you 1600MHz, etc. Assuming it works.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[mn4az]

Crash... sorry about that.. my last re-read throught the forum was phsstpok's response to me and then I replied to your post.

 

[phsstpok]

I don't think the old ASHA cores were well known for overclocking but you could still try.

Yup, XP2400+ is best upgrade for a legacy board. The reasons are

1) high multiplier bit already enabled. Gives access to the multiplier remaps.

2) High default voltage, high enough to avoid POSTing problems.

3)Default multiplier is 15x. (Avoids the problem with 13x-14.5x multipliers on legacy boards)

Just drop the XP2400+ into your KT7 and it just boots (after clearing CMOS) to 2000 mhz but at 20 x 100.

20X is common on Abit motherboards. Not sure about other boards get. My Epox 8KTA3PRO defaults to the CPU's actual default.

One thing, with your KT7 the BIOS will report "unknown processor" but it will still work.

Speaking of BIOS, I'm not sure which one is best. My KT7 had BIOS 64 at the time that I tried the upgrade. I think the lastest KT7 BIOS is C.. something or other.

<b>[Addition]</b>
Watch out for locked processors. I heard a couple people claim that AMD is even locking Tbreds. I'm not sure whether this is fact but a locked processor wouldn't be of much use with your KT7.


<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 12/11/03 03:05 PM.</EM></FONT></P>