Fastest PIII on BX motherboard?

[Jamestl]

Hi,

I haven't read too much into computer hardware in a while so this might be a stupid question. I have a OCed celeron 266@412mhz right now. I want to upgrade to a faster PIII now and i was wondering which ones will fit my Abit BH6. the board supports up to 133mhz, but i'm not sure about the AGP bus... I want to keep it simple and only upgrade the CPU and nothing else. any suggestion would be much appreciated. thanks!

 

[Erasmus-X]

There have a been a few successes with running high-end Coppermines in the BH6, but considering all of the issues you'll have to deal with (including the AGP divider), you might want to consider buying a new motherboard. If you must still have a BX, the MSI BXMaster is an excellent board.

 

[JackMDS]

The BH6 does not have a ¼ pci divider; thus, any fsb above 112MHz is questionable.

The best I saw is Celeron 566 running 8.5 x 100 = 850 MHz, or to buy guarantied Celeron 600 (they are very costly) that will do 9 x 100=900MHz.

 

[Jamestl]

ok. some specific questions.

is 850 the highest i can go with PIII and stay at 100 FSB?
what is the highest clock multiplier on the BH6?
How many (%) of celeron 566 will make it to 850?
is there any steppings i should look for in any of these CPUs?

i want to spend the least amount of money possible and still get decent performace so feel free to share any ideas. thanks

 

[AngelOfDeath]

I can't remember if it goes higher than 8,5 in multiplier. But I don't think you need a new mobo 'cause the BH6 is a great mobo if you buy a pIII. The problem with the celly is that you might not be able to give it enough voltage when trying to oc the sucker to 850. The BH6 has for some reason not a higher voltage setting than 1.7 .

If I were you I would buy a PIII-700E Then you would be able to feel the kick from a really fast cpu. And if you get the chance of buying a better mobo later on you would be able to oc the cpu to 933

Just my 2 cents

AoD

 

[Jeff H]

Jamestl wrote:

> is 850 the highest i can go with PIII and stay at 100 FSB?

That's the highest stock speed that I've seen successful reports of in the Abit newsgroup.

> what is the highest clock multiplier on the BH6?

If I recall I've seen multipliers >10 in the SS BIOS, but w/ a P!!! they're probably not very useful.

> is there any steppings i should look for in any of these CPUs?

Look for cB0. Reportedly the next stepping is cC0, but there's some question as to how the P!!! 1.13GHz recall might affect that stepping.

The BH6 only has 1/1 and 2/3 AGP multipliers, so any FSB >100 will overclock the AGP bus. FWIW I have a BH6 rev1.02 board, and two months ago I replaced an SL2YK PII-300 @ 450MHz (2.0 core voltage) w/ an FC-PGA P!!!-650 cB0 on an Abit Slotket!!! and a Thermaltake Golden Orb HSF. I flashed to BIOS version SS prior to install, and the combo hasn't skipped a beat <g>.

 

[Fisher999]

Jeff, I'm familiar with all the FSB (front side bus)- PCI bus- AGP bus- ratio\mobo divisor issues as well as CPU voltage issues, proper cooling, etc... when it comes to overclocking but I have not been able to find an explanation of cBO stepping.

1) WHAT IS cBO stepping?

2) How does it improve the odds of a successful overclock?

3) I've also heard of the expected cC0 stepping, but what is it?

Any explanation you can give will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Greg

 

[Midnight Rambler]

cB0 is just a different (newer) stepping. Throughout the production life of a CPU (or any other product for that matter ...), there are various revisions and tweaks to a product and/or it processes (aka engineering changes). This may be to correct errata (errors, bugs, etc.), or even to improve process yields. The main reason people want a newer stepping is because of the belief that a newer stepping will come from a higher yielding process and thus be more overclockable.