Overclocking Pentium 3 450 problems

[Agent James]

It's late, the box has been open for days, I've seached the internet, tried different bios flashes and I still can't figure out how to overclock this piece of junk. Can anybody tell me if it's possible.

Infront of me is ...

Gigabyte 6-BXD dual processor motherboard
One Pentium 3 450 SL37C (in slot for CPU 1)
256 MB 100Mhz Ram
300W power suopply
Running on Win 98 2nd ed

From what I've read this should be pretty overclockable and I've set the multiplier dip switches to x5 and x5.5 but there is no change in speed. Please help! I don't want to have to buy a new computer to play Max Payne.


:confused:

[Harshu]

Change the FSB of your mobo as the clock multiplyer may be locked.

[LostBok]

Not sure about the multiplier, but I'm sure you can up the FSB to 112Mhz to give yourself 504Mhz...

I'm running a dual P3-500Mhz @ 5x112=560Mhz, on a TekRam dual P3 Slot1 BX motherboard.

Another point, if you are running win98, you do know that you are only runin gone of the CPU's - if you're not goign to upgrade to win2000, you might as well upgrade to a CeleronII 1Ghz or somehtign similar - they're not SMP capable, but one of those CPU's shoudl be enough to allow you to play MAx PAyne... also, what graphics card are you running - that sometimes makes more of a difference than the CPU!

[LostBok]

Providing your memory is capable of doing this... most decent CAS2 PC100 RAM should be capable of it.... I had some PC100 LGS memory runnign at 133Mhz, CAS2... although with a lot of PC100 memory you'll have to slow it down to CAS3@112Mhz...

A bonus of overclocking the FSB and getting 504Mhz instead of the multiplier to give you 500Mhz is that your memory runs more than 10% faster (at 112Mhz), as does your PCI bus and AGP too!

A lot of hardware will NOT clock to 133Mhz FSB on a BX chipset, however most should make 112Mhz... if you're having any probs, try removing any older hardware... especially HDD's.

Most nVidia cards should handle 112Mhz FSB fine... not sure about others though...

[Agent James]

Cheers guys,

This is my first attempt at overclocking a processor so please bear with me.

This motherboard only has a choice of 66MHZ or 100MHZ. I can't anything like that in the Setup. I've recently checked my speed with WCPUID and I've got no change despite the multiplier switches being sert to x5.5. You mentioned that the multiplier may be locked (on the CPU I presume) do I have to do some soldering to break out of this 450Mhz circle? :eek:

I just got another PIII 450 which I should be getting in the mail soon. It's a SL35D. Maybe that'll work. I know about the dual processor Win98 issue. If I turn it into a sever then I'll switch to win2000 and plonk both porocessors in.

As for Max Payne, I've got a ELSAS Gladiac MX clocked to 220Mhz with memory at 210Mhz. I'd just like to squeeze that extra 150Mhz out of the CPU though.

Could it just be that somthing on this motherboard or CPU is just utterly tamperproof to stop beginners like me from doing stuff like this?

[Agent James]

Okay, I've looked more closely at the board. The FSB speed is selected via a pin connector near the CPU slots. Either 100Mhz or 66Mhz. It's currently set to 100.

RAM is PC100. Crucial 128MBCL2 and some unknown 128MBCL3. Took out the CL3 memory for a while but to no avail.

As I said the clock multiplier switches for the CPU aren't making any difference to the CPU speed. Any other suggestions?

[Agent James]

I've done some more research and if you could make sure I've got my facts right that would be great.

As P3's are multiplier locked I can only overclock it via buming up the FSB (to 133Mhz hopefully). But my FSB only goes up to 100Mhz via a jumper so I can't overclock it. Does that sound right?

:confused:

[Agent James]

That should be bumping

:)

[Buji]

If you can't bump the FSB over 100Mhz you are out of luck my friend. My P3 450 will do 558 and maybe more if I didn't have a stick of PC100 in there. 450's have gone as high as 675.
http://overclockers.cssftware.com/cpudb/index.cfm :)

[Oleg Mirnij]

...is to try a H.Oda's software front side bus frequency switcher -- the SoftFSB. You should find out the type of the clock generator installed on your motherboard (although the utility already have some presets for a nubmer of motherboards).

Here is the link to it: http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/~nrklv/soft/sfsb17g1.exe

If the link is dead (the author has cancelled the support) then try any search engine.

I have heard about another utility named CPUFSB, which does the same, but haven't tested it.

WBR, Oleg