Voltage on an Athlon

[alx098]

I have an alpha heat sink and two global win fans sitting on my Athlon. The original speed is 550Mhz at 700/750Mhz the system becomes extremely unstayable. The current voltage setting is at 1.75V - with the cooling that I have, how much higher can I go?

Thanks,
Alex.

[This message has been edited by alx098 (edited 01-10-2000).]

[Dominus]

Not a bit past 1.8v, and thats pushing it.

Do you have silicon thermal grease under your heatsink? And what speed is your cache?

You may have to lower the cache to 2/5 core speed to get it stable.

[alx098]

It does have the heat paste, but how do you change the cache divider? Right now it's L2 512, divider set at default 1/2.

[Hellhound]

ok ,man check this out....My Brother has an athlon... he was tinkering with it...working on overclocking it...and then the next morning poof...his new cpu looks like a burnt cookie....were gonna take pics of this one for all of you whove never baked on of these puppies.....anyways.....the moral to this story is "watch that voltage."

[Dominus]

Not possible at the moment without soldering. But the guy that wrote SoftFSB and WCPUID is working on a piece of software that will allow you to change L2 dividers from Windows.

Look for it on AMDZone (http://www.amdzone.com)

[alx098]

Thanks fellas! Hey Hellhound, can you post a picture of that fried Athlon - I'm still to find out what a burned CPU looks like.

[This message has been edited by alx098 (edited 01-13-2000).]

[Hellhound]

ok heres the deal....my brother took pics of it ...so I can put them on this board...I asked him to get them developed and am waiting....so its all on his head...but you gotta trust me ....i think youll find it amusing when you finally see it...you know how most things fry out....well this thing was burnt crispy with heavy carbon....hes having the whole system checked....ill let you guys know whats happening..If and when i do get the pics ..Ill make a new post for it and label it cooking with athlon http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Ilya_S_K]

Alex,
have you considered that your PC100 ram could be your bottleneck. I am an Intel user and have not messed with Athlon that much, but I can tell you one thing that ram is often causing unstability if you go over its specs. By changing your frequency on CPU you are changing your fsb,right? ( i am not sure about this, according to Tom from Tomshardware.com, he was changing multiplier only) But if you are playing with fbs and your Athlon 550 have been designed to run at 200fbs what is your fsb at 700Mhz or 750Mhz? If you have generic RAM (not Corsair or Sumsung) it could be your problem.
Just a thought.
Good luck man.

[alx098]

Ilya,

I got my RAM from Crucial Technologies, so I would say that it is of pretty good quality. Thanks for the idea though.

Later...

[AuraEdge]

The RAM on the athlon runs at 100 Bus speed. In overclocking the Athlon, most people will change the muliplier only, except for extra push before the next 50mhz multiplier jump. If only the miltiplier is changed, then the RAM is still in spec.

[Ilya_S_K]

that was my point, what if Alex changed his FSB? his O/Cing card documentation did not say anything about changing the multiplier, it seemed very strange to me. The only thing that I saw was a frequency that he is able to change. It did not specify if it was internal or external frequency that he was changing. So if he is changing external frequency that means his RAM is out of specs. But yes AuraEdge if Alex is changing his multiplier ONLY the bottleneck is not his RAM.

[alx098]

Guys, this is kind of confusing. The supported FSB is 100Mhz, internal clock runs at 650Mhz, and external at 200Mhz. I used one of those OC cards, so the multiplier should be set properly. Could you fellas expand a little more on the RAM part? Also, I have tried to increase the FSB trough SoftFSB but it does not support MS-6167 mobo - any suggestions there?

[This message has been edited by alx098 (edited 01-17-2000).]

[Ilya_S_K]

External fequency on Athlon is 200Mhz, internal frequency is exernal x multiplier. There is some kind of devider that is set for RAM, which makes it possible to use PC100 with 200Mhz FSB. You might want to e-mail to the company that makes these O/C cards and ask them what frequency they are talking about in documentation. Or just run a WCPUID program;it should identify what multiplier you have on your CPU.
If your multiplier is higher then 2.75(550/200) at 750Mhz internal frequency then your RAM is within specs. If your multiplier stays the same while you are changing you internal frequency then you maight have a RAM problem.
These are just my assumptions, so if someone has any facts feel free to correct me.
Thanks, Ilya.


[This message has been edited by Ilya_S_K (edited 01-18-2000).]