How much voltage can a Katmai take?

[AluminumStudios]

I have an ABIT BX6-R2 with a PIII-500 (Katmai .25 micron core with 512 kb of off-die cache.)

It runs perfectly stable at 117 MHz FSB (585 MHz). But if I bump the FSB up to 124 MHz (cpu=620MHz) I can't even get into WIndows (it spontaneously reboots or blue screens.) I bumped the voltage up from the default 2.0 to 2.1 and got into WIndows before a blue screen.

If I leave my case open and have a floor fan blow in, my cpu heat sink fins barely get warm, so I don't believe heat will be an issue 🙂

So my question is, how far can I push until I kill my CPU? I have Mushkin CL2 PC133 SDRAM, a 1/4 PCI divider so my PCI is in spec, and a Matrox Marvel G400 (not sure how much that can take since I"m limited to a 2/3 AGP divider.)

 

[CraigRT]

On a 2V CPU with decent cooling, I would not hesitate to push 2.3-2.4V

Hell, I'd even go higher.. however, it doesn't think it helps past a certain point...

 

[AluminumStudios]

Yeah, the limiting factor of the Katmai chips was the external SRAM cache. Intel never released a Katmai past 600 MHz because the cache couldn't handle it. Even if my core doesn't mind, my cache may be erroring.

I was just wondering if there was a danger zone for voltage, because I wanna try higher if there is any chance for success.

 

[The_Lurker]

With an alpha P3125i ran it at 620mhz at 2.3 volts stable for a few months.... I can run the thing at 120mhz 2.1 volts w/ a Retail HSF (things a joke, 8CFM fan?!) and it ran fine, although it hit a upwards of 60 degress celsius.

 

[Assimilator1]

With modest air cooling I wouldn't go beyond 2.2v ,depends how much case cooling you have & how good your HSF is if you want to go higher.