questions about Athlon 600

[Strat 1]

I have a new Athlon K7 600 running on an ASUS K7M.
When I change the Chipset speed from 100 Mhz to 105 Mhz the Processor boots up saying I am 650. Am I really at 650Mhz or what? If so, can I damage any components and will I see a real boost in performance? In addition, when I run the ASUS probe (utility function with board) it states that my max speed for the processor is 800 Mhz. What does all this mean, is it that easy to over clock this CPU or am I just fooling myself

I just changed it to 110 and then I was at 666


[This message has been edited by Strat 1 (edited 02-09-2000).]

[OuTpaTienT]

First, the bios is reporting 650 because as far as the bios knows, there is not such a thing as a Athlon 630mhz, so it's just reporting the closest guess.

I don't know what the results of that probe actually mean, but you can be pretty confident that your Athlon is not really a 600mhz cpu at all. Under it's plastic casing the core is probably at least a 700mhz or 750mhz cpu...maybe more?

You could close your eyes and spit and chances are you'll hit a web site that talks about Athlon overclocking. The subject is EVERYWHERE. Investigate and you'll find out all that's involved.

[This message has been edited by OuTpaTienT (edited 02-09-2000).]

[On the Lam]

I have my Athlon 500 running on 108Mhz fsb, and upon bootup mine says 550, but in Asus Probe it says 540.

I think when it says Max speed 800, I think it means the bios will support a processor up to 800...IMHO

[Apostle 83]

It should be pretty easy to figure out what your chip is running at-regardless of what probes say. Athlons are not multiplier locked. Intel chips are. I have an intel chip, never had an athlon.

But, since athlons aren't locked, in the bios there should be a multiplier parameter. take thatX your fsb, and you have speed of processor.

[alx098]

Multiplier time FSB would equal the CPU speed, so the higher the FSB the faster your CPU will run (basicly). Be carefull, don't set you FSB too high - you might permanently damage the hardware. You are not realy overclocking the CPU, you are just changing FSB - to overclock the CPU you need to change the multiplier - both will increase the performance though.

About your Asus utility, most likely you can flash your BIOS to a higher version which will support higher speeds - just go to heir website to get the BIOS update.

[Ilya_S_K]

Overclocking refers to a set of techniques used to increase the working frequency of a processor in comparison to the default one. Changing FSB means that you are changing external frequency. There are o/c cards are available out there, and most people who bought MSI mobo when they just came out had no option to change FSB in BIOS. Therefore they had to purchase an o/c card that would let them change multiplier on their CPU, a big thank you to AMD that there is no multiplier lock on their CPUs. By changing multiplier you are changing your internal frequency. Like someone mentioned above internal frequency equals to multiplier times FSB(external frequency). Strat 1, since you have a kick *** mobo you have ability to change internal as well as external frequency. As I read up somewhere you can achieve better performance from your CPU by changing your external frequency. But watch out for your RAM. If you have PC100, and your FSB is higher then 100Mhz then you running it out of specs, that could cause some problems if you have chip system memory. But I know too many Intel CPU owners who have their PC100 RAM running at 129Mz with no problems, rock stable. One more thing I might mention here. If you decide to change your external frequency and bump it up to 129, for example, make sure that your HD and any other PCI & AGP devices can handle extra load. What I mean by that is that by changing your FSB you are changing PCI and AGP frequency. Default frequency is 33.4Mhz for PCI and 66 for AGP. If you have 129Mhz FSB that means that your PCI port runs at 129*1/3=43Mhz and your AGP is running at 129*2/3=86Mhz. This might cause potential problems, big problems; data corruption on HD or you might just fry your Video Card. So you might be better off tweaking you FSB and multiplier at the same time. Play around and see which is the ultimate setting for your system. Make sure that you’ll let us know on your progress.
Best of luck, Ilya.