Is my Soyo KT333 holding me back from OC?

[mrman3k]

I have an Athlon XP 1700+ at 1900+ (1.6GHz) speeds on a 145MHz FSB and default 11X multi. If I try to go to even 146MHz FSB, the system crashes. I do not think it is the RAM as it is rated for PC3200 and I am far from those speeds. My proc could be the limiter but it seems like it should be able to go a bit higher than this. The motherboard is the Soyo Dragon KT333 Lite which I think could be the bottleneck. I have heard on these boards do not have any thermal pads or grease between the northbridge heatsink and the chip. Could this be my problem?

Any ways try finding what is the part holding me back?

 

[MangoX]

It's your processor. It looks like your processor is running at the default multiplier (ie: 11). If you lower the multiplier by a notch you can hit higher speeds. I'm on a AT7 (KT333 chipset also) and curently running at 166, but I've went as high as 200 (albeit not stable tho). But I've lowered my multiplier a bit to hit that fsb speed.

I used to have a palomino 1700+ back then and the highest fsb I could reach was about 140 before the system would crap out. It's multiplier was locked though, and I wasn't able to successfully unlock it.

 

[SoonerJoseph]

Have you/can you increase the cpu voltage? I'm not familiar with that mobo so I do not know if you can 😀.

 

[mrman3k]

It is a Palomino. I tried upping the voltage all the way to 1.85 and no luck.🙁

I even tried upping the memory voltage, and AGP voltage but it would not go past the 145MHz FSB. The processor is locked and I was thinking of unlocking it, but the conductive grease/pen/etc cost about $15 and then I might as well pay $30 more and get a Tbred. So if there are any other ideas, please post them here🙂