i have a abit th7 m/board with onboard raid.
pentium 4 1.8 cpu.
512 pc 800 rambus.
10 gig hard drive partitioned into 2 with xp home and 98 se on as dual booting.
40 gig on as a storage drive.
40 gig as a install everything but o/s drive.
extigy soundcard.
firewire card for my dv camcorder.
msi g-force 4 -440 mx graphics card.
ricoh combo drive.
21 adi microscan monitor.
any ideas on how to overclock it to the max but with very good stability( i cannot afford to melt it)
i also have a blue indigo orb cpu heatsink/fan .
im new to overclocking so please speak english!!!!
:-)

O/c can be achieved in different ways - you can o/c your CPU front side bus (FSB) only, or also mobo FSB (which o/c's your cpu, memory, pci & agp in one go).

As you have a intel chip you cannot o/c your CPU only (intel have preventing 'unlocking' their chips). However, you can o/c your mobo FSB as another way of achieving this for your CPU.

Presumably your current mobo FSB is 100Mhz (quad pumped to 400Mhz FSB?). You can go via BIOS or possibly mobo jumper and set this to 133Mhz FSB, effectively speeding everything up by 33%. Your CPU stock fan will probably cope with this, but other parts of the system may not tolerate such a jump. This is where it gets a bit more complicated -

The main limits of o/c are temperature, voltage and PCI/AGP dividers (ratio for setting their speed based on mobo FSB).
What you need to do is watch your temps before modding to check how much it rises afterwards - too much will damage the system.

Voltage and PCI/AGP settings are where the fun begins - ideally you want your PCI @ 33Mhz & AGP @ 66Mhz, so you may need to go into BIOS and change your settings to limit these.

I wont go on further because you dont want loads of info at once. For now just up your mobo FSB to 133Mhz and see if the system runs - if it does and its still similar temps then fine, job done. but if it doesn't or you're an enthusiast then you want to check the bits about voltage/agp/pci.

If the machine doesnt reboot after upping to 133Mhz then clear the CMOS (jumper found on the board) to reset settings and then reboot

Sheesh! talk about breaking one of the unwritten rules of overclocking!

My advice is don't jump straight to 133MHz FSB! ,there's a very high chance that your RDRAM won't be able to run at that speed (not that it won't be harmed).

Btw one of the unwritten rules of overclocking is to increase your FSB in the smallest possible steps(or at least no more than 3MHz steps where possible).

1 warning ,increasing your FSB to 'unofficial' speeds ,as you go further up from 100MHz your PCI & AGP speeds will go more & more out of spec.The PCI bus works on a 1/3 speed divider of the FSB ,hence 33MHz from 100MHz (AGP is 2/3).

So at 105MHz FSB your PCI will be 35MHz ,it is very unlikely that you will encounter any problems upto about 37MHz PCI but it is a remote possibility ,the worst thing that could happen is that the data on a HDD could be corrupted ,if its your OS then it might need re-installing!.If your seriously worried about that I suggest you make a full image of your OS HDDs & any other critical data (which we all should anyway).

Lets say you make it to 115MHz FSB (38MHz PCI/IDE) & then you chicken out of going further ,your still going to have your CPU at 2070MHz ,which is quite feasible for those.

RDRAM does not have as much headroom for overclocking as DDR RAM does ,so you may find that your RAM will ultimately dictate your highest FSB.If I remember rightly PC800 tops out somewhere around 110-120MHz.

Btw if you find you are able (& willing) to reach 120MHz FSB & you have a choice of 120/40 or 120/30 go for the latter ,the 3MHz underclock of the PCI/IDE bus won't significantly impact HDD performance & it'll definately avoid data corruption.

re 120/30 ,IF your mbrd supports 133MHZ FSB officially ,then it will have a 1/4 divider for the PCI/IDE bus.The 1/4 divider tends to start around the low 120s on most mbrds ,but I don't specifically know for your mbrd atm.
[edit] I see your mbrd does not officially support 133MHz FSB ,so you may or may not have a 1/4 PCI divider

Sorry but you need all this info!

Here's an interesting article about your mbrd for you
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1534&p=3

Judging by the fact they hit 145MHz FSB that mbrd must have 1/4 PCI divider.

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Q6600 @3GHz

MSI P6N Platinium

2GB OCZ DDR2 800

X1950 Pro 

 

Sempron64 3100 @2.52GHz @1.45v (280x9)

Asus K8N

1.5 GB Crucial DDR400 @229MHz

X800 XTPE

Good points Assimilator - i thought i'd mentioned that small increments were given as the way forward. However, i did ramble on a bit with the detail so i ended up missing that bit out!! -Sorry if that wasnt clear in my post

And you're dead right by saying that you need to arm yourself with as much info as possible before attempting anything like this. Running things faster than their original spec causes all sorts of problems unless you are careful - aside from Gainward i've heard of no-one giving any warranty for o/c.

all you guys seem to know what your talking about!!(and you were all good at maths at school)
but my motherboard goes up like this::
1800 times 100 18 times multiplier.
2000 times 20 times multiplier.
188 times 133 times multplier.
etc etc etc.................
as you can guess from this my board will only let me go up in huge leaps!!! or am i missing something???

are you talking about in the BIOS?

If your BIOS does not allow small increments (eg - 1Mhz) or does not have AGP/PCI divider settings within it then you may be better leaving well alone.

If the only BIOS settings you have are 100Mhz & 133Mhz then you could THEORETICALLY up the FSB, but without the AGP/PCI settings then you have to be very foolhardy or prepared for things to break.
It may also be that although the board states it has 133Mhz FSB settings it cannot realistically reach that speed - thats true for some older AMD boards, not sure about Intel (over to your Assimilator)

No problems Marky ,I just happened to have a lot if time on my hands today so I gave a little detail

leehenderson
Your not too clear mate ,but it looks like you were quoting the mulitplier ,for AMD cpus they go uo in 0.5 steps from x5 to x13 ,after that they go up in 1 steps.

To get the fine tuning you need to look at the Bus Speed options in the bios (if you have them) ,the better mbrds will have steps going up in 1MHz from 100 upto 200+MHz.More basic & branded mbrds may only have 100/133/166MHz ,or you may have no options & it can only be done automatically

Btw don't forget Ath XPs don't show cpu clock a model rating ,so an XP2200 runs at 1.8GHz ,& an XP1500 is @ 1.33GHz etc.

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Q6600 @3GHz

MSI P6N Platinium

2GB OCZ DDR2 800

X1950 Pro 

 

Sempron64 3100 @2.52GHz @1.45v (280x9)

Asus K8N

1.5 GB Crucial DDR400 @229MHz

X800 XTPE

where will i find the bus speeds assimilator???????
take no notice of my graphics card now btw because ive just put a ti 4800 se in it and its benchmarking at 1487 (futuremark 2003)
9654 on 2001se.
i still think my machine should do better...........shouldnt it???
shall i get my wallet out and upgrade some more????
need some helpful advice on this one!!!
leehenderson.