Newbie OC questions

[EdgeDS]

Been reading for awhile, thought I'd jump in.

System specs:

Win98SE
300W power supply
Celeron 600
Asus CUV4X
ATI Radeon VE, AGP version, with 2 Plug & Play monitors attached
256M PC133 Mitsubishi RAM
Alpha PEP66 heatsink with Arctic Silver thermal grease
IBM IDE hard drive, U/ATA 100
SB PCI512 sound card
Linksys Fast ethernet card
56K PCI Lite modem
Delta 52X CD-Rom

Ideally I'd like to get the processor to run at 900, which from what I've read, shouldn't stress any of the components I've listed.

The motherboard has a Jumperfree option which allows changes to be made to the VCore voltage and FSB from BIOS. Unfortunately it only allows FSB settings of 66, 100, and 133 through BIOS - I've tried voltages of 1.5 to 1.8 (the max allowed in the BIOS version I have), but setting the FSB to 100 won't get the system to post with any of those voltages.

Manual DIP switch settings allow FSB settings of 66, 68, 75, 80, 83, 100, 103, 105, 112, etc. When I bought the board I didn't really comprehend how much of a gap 83 to 100 is, heh.

75, 80, and 83 all push the AGP and PCI speeds a bit higher than I'd like, and although they all boot, 83 isn't stable (haven't tried the other two for long periods of time, but I'm guessing they're similar). What I can't seem to do is change the voltage settings off the default 1.5V anywhere, any way, when I manually set the FSB.

So, finally, the questions:
- Would it be worth the time to get a new version of BIOS to try voltages over 1.8?
- After finding nothing in the manual or website on manually changing voltage settings, is there some resource I'm blatantly overlooking?
- The motherboard is rated for processor speeds of "800 or more"...does this sound like a case where the "or more" isn't going to happen, and a new mobo would be the only solution to reaching 100 FSB?
- If 75 or 80 FSB are more stable than 83 (the most intense usage I have is an occasional game of Starcraft), would the AGP/PCI speeds based on those FSB speeds cause any components to work less efficiently?

Thanks
Scott

[jaida]

hey good to see a new face Welcome http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

to answer your questions

it wouldn't be worth going over 1.8v anything over that is way to high and could fry the chip or shorten its lifetime quite significantly.

There is no need for you to manually change the voltage settings just change them through the bios as you have been.

When a motherboard is rated as you state "800 mhz or more" its usually does support higher speed chips with a later bios upgrade. The problem here is that your chip couldn't run at 100 fsb, your motherboard isn't the problem.

75,80 or 83 fsb shouldn't cause any problems with components if the right multipliers are used. You will run into no problems with you pci speeds but you might run into problems with your agp. AGP has a multiplier setting of 1/1 or 2/3. AGP runs default at 66 mhz which in your case would be 66 fsb * 1/1. If you get up into 80, 83 fsb you might need to change the multiplier to 2/3 the fsb as your radeon might not be able to handle the agp speed.

Basically I feel your processor cannot run at 900 mhz its just the limitation of the chip. Try shooting for stability at 83 fsb and go from there. Good luck

[Bsdboy]

jaida gave you great advice,the only thing I can add for what it's worth is that my All In Wonder Radeon runs fine at 84mhz agp speed.

Good Luck
Bsdboy