Can old CPU (Pentium 4 1.6 Willamette) be optimized??

[Franklogus]

My doubt is about how can I to push my (old) CPU, to increase its speed. I recently made an parcial upgrade of my current PC (from 2001), and, in few days, I will be upgrading another components, except CPU, because I have no money to it right now ... As an observation, my PC has everything running in default speed, without any "boost" ...
My main configuration is : Actual --> UPGRADE

1) CPU : Pentium 4 1.6 Willamette (socket 478, 256 cache) --> NO UPGRADE, for the time being.
2) MOBO : Asus P4B (i845) --> I have already upgraded to Asus P4SDX (SiS 655)
3) MEMORY : 03 sticks of 256 MB each one (SDRam PC 100 Mhz - Samsung) --> I have already upgraded to 02 sticks of 256 MB each one (DDR 333 PC 2700 - Kingston)
4) VIDEO CARD : Inno3D GeForce4 MX 440 (128 MB) --> I will upgrade (within few days) to Gigabyte 9600XT (128 MB).
5) HD : 40 GB Maxtor Ultra-ATA 100 5400 RPM --> I will upgrade (within few days) to 120 GB (Maxtor) ATA 133 7200 RPM.

- I can say that, with this parcial upgrade that I have already done (MoBo, Memories), I didnt feel any sensible gain of performance (Instead, sometimes it looks like a bit more slow, in spite of I have changed the SDRAM memory to DDR 333)... Would it be normal?

- Is there some technical possibility of to make some "overclock" in my CPU (P4 1.6 Willamette), while I dont have money to UpGrade the processor? Would it be recommended in this case? If YES, how could I make this "boost", without any additional cooling fan, in a SAFE WAY, please ?

Any hints would be very appreciated !!
Thanks a lot in advance !

 

[Zap]

Does the board support AGP/PCI lock? If so, then you can just start bumping up the FSB. AFAIK the 655 chipset is the only SiS chipset that does.

Otherwise you can just bump the FSB to 133, giving you 2.1XXGHz something. May need voltage boost. This is kinda possible since the fastest Willamette chip was 2GHz. You may need better cooling.

Make sure your RAM is running in dual channel mode.

 

[BigBadBiologist]

You probably have some headroom for overclocking, but not much. The willys were typically only able to achieve a 100MHz or so overclock if you're lucky. You should check in your BIOS that your RAM settings are optimized (you may be able to run the RAM asynchronously; faster than your FSB). The other thing is to make sure you have all of the correct chipset drivers installed.

If you are strapped for cash and want to upgrade, I reccomend going to eBay and looking for mobile celerons. They are pretty cheap (you can probably find one for under $30) and they overclock very well (I have a mobile celeron 1.5GHz that I am running on a 845 chipset mobo at 2.7GHz). There is a pin mod that you need to do, but it is pretty easy.