overclocking? ABIT BH6 help

I am new to the inside of my computer but it dose not look too complicated.
I am trying to overclock my Pentium II 350 it is a slot 1 in an ABIT BH6 board with a 440BX chip set. I have read a lot but I am new and I dont Know what I am looking for yet.
I know what the processes is for overclocking but I dont know how far I can take it with out damage.

I am on a budget, so I cant just go get a faster computer. So if there is some info I can get to help my cause I will greatly appreciat it

Thanks
Craig

Tom used to have a good overclockers guide. It is now outdated and useless. I got my start in o/c here on Toms. Look on bxboards.com. They might have some old articles on p2s. if yor 350 is running 66mgz fsb you might be able to up the fsb to 100 making your cpu 550. I would read up on how do it first.

Craig,
I have the same board as you and am currently running a Celeron 566 overclocked to 850. Because Intel locks it's chip's multipliers, the method you will use to overclock your current machine is to increase the Front Side Bus (FSB) speed. Your default FSB is 100 MHz and your current processor is running at 3.5 times that speed. Therefore, if you increase your FSB by X MHz then you increase the speed of your processor by 3.5 times that.

You must realize, however, that there are limits to overclocking which are based on the quality (stepping) of your processor, the fan/heatsink you are using, your case ventilation, and the quality and type of components in your machine.

Your fist step in overclocking is to get into the BIOS and become familiar with the settings, so read the manual thoroughly. Once you get into the BIOS, go to the section which controls the processor voltage and FSB speed. When set to default, I believe your processor will require 2.0v. When overclocking, sometimes you need to increase the core voltage in order to ensure that the chip will run stable. The down side of increasing the voltage is that it creates more heat which the fan/heatsink will have to remove. The key here is to move in very small increments; select the next fastest FSB speed (112 MHz if I remember correctly) and see if it will boot at stock the default core voltage. If that works, then try the next highest speed (124 MHz) and so on. When you reach a point where the system won't boot or load Windoze, then you may have to try increasing the core voltage. Remember, small increments, no greater than 0.05v at a time. (Everytime the system fails to boot, the BIOS will reset to it's defaults and you will have to go back in and make your changes) As a rule of thumb, don't increase your processor's core voltage much more than 10% or you risk shortening it's life. If you install a high performance fan/heatsink, you may be able to run your machine stably at a higher core voltage and higher speed.

Another limitation of the BX board is that it doesn't have a documented 1/4 multiplier for the PCI bus (although there is some speculation on this). What this means is that when you increase your FSB beyond 100 MHz, your PCI bus (which runs at a default 33 MHz) will also be overclocked. This can cause some problems with your PCI cards in that they won't operate when the PCI bus speed is out of spec. Again, it all depends on how high you take your FSB speed and the quality of the components in your machine. Oh yeah I almost forgot, the AGP slot also does not have a 1/2 multiplier (it runs at 66 MHz) so it will also be overclocked when setting the FSB higher than 100 MHz.

In closing, my advise would be to diddle around with the settings and get comfortable with them and if you can't get much additional performance out of your current processor, then search for a slocket and Celeron (preferably a 533,566, or 600). When these Celerons are placed on a 100 MHz bus (they run at 66 MHz default), you get an 800, 850, or 900 MHz celeron for a very reasonable price. New 66 MHz bus speed Celerons are less than $50 and a good slocket can be had for around $10-15.

Hope this helps.



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You're just mad because the voices only talk to me.

Crashman,
No, I didn't "buy into the myths". With retail cooling, you can create enough additional heat to potentially cook a cpu if you go "much more than" 10% higher than stock voltage (read my exact words). I'm willing to bet that your cpu doesn't have a retail fan/hs on it. I'm currently running my Celeron at +10% voltage and it's nice and cool w/ a small Alpha heatsink and quiet fan, around 34C under load. Also, why encourage someone who's new to overclocking to try to fry his cpu the first time out?

Next, if you're such an expert on the BX board, then why does MY board not have a DOCUMENTED 1/4 divider? Hint, hint, it's becuase there are TWO different versions of the BH6. The rev 1.0X boards did not come with a DOCUMENTED 1/4 divider, the rev 1.1 boards did come with it (rev 1.1 boards have color coded plugs on the back plane). The speculation arrises because people on another forum have sworn and shown screen shots that their rev 1.0X boards automatically selected an undocumented 1/4 divider when the FSB was set to 133 MHz in the BIOS while using the SS version of the BIOS. This occured even though their BIOS clearly stated that the PCI divider was set to 1/3. They used Sandra to determine that their machine was running with the correct (1/4) PCI divider. I personally cannot attest to this so I cannont claim that it is true, thus the "there's speculation" statement. I probably should have been clearer and stated that I was referring to the rev 1.0X board (my bad, I assumed Craig has that board becuase they far outnumber the rev 1.1 boards).

And finally, Craig clearly stated that he was on a budget, thus my recommendation for the 66 MHz FSB Celerons up to the Celeron 600 and a slocket. Celerons between 633 and 766 generally don't like the 100 MHz FSB and the Celerons over 800 MHz are built for the 100 MHz FSB where you run into the PCI/AGP multiplier issue when overclocking. For around $70 (cpu and slocket, shipped) he can basically be guaranteed to double or triple his processor's performance (not machine performance). I haven't seen ANY PIII chips for less than $110 and that's just for a 750E Slot 1; the recommendation of a PIII1000EB will be at least $140 not including shipping and a slocket, and the newer Celerons (1.0 GHz, 1.1 GHz) are all at least $80 (not including shipping and a slocket) for only marginally higher clock speeds. Plus with the additional money he would save by using a 66 MHz FSB Celeron, he could maybe afford to upgrade his video card, if that was his next bottleneck. My recommendations are based on Craig's newness to overclocking and his desire to keep it affordable.

And Craig, don't forget that you will probably need to update your BIOS to a newer version in order to accept the lower voltages required by the coppermine chips (rev 1.0X boards currently are up to SS version of BIOS). For any of the FCPGA chips, you will need to purchase a slocket also.

You're just mad because the voices only talk to me.

So what is the fastest processor a BH-6 Rev.1.0 can handle with proper BIOS, RAM, adaptors etc?