Is this normal overclocking results for an old Duron 1.6Ghz and PC266 RAM?

[Battousai001]

Hi, I was wondering and at the same time surprised with what I just tried. A week ago I bought an old 2nd hand Duron 1.6 Ghz Applebred processor and installed it on an MSI motherboard (746f Ultra SiS746 chipset). The RAM I have are two sticks one 128MB DDR266 (Apacer brand) and the other 256MB DDR333 (generic brand).

First I have tried overclocking it to 1.8Ghz by increasing fsb to 150Mhz., the system ran rock stable and I was thinking that the ram might not be able to handle the fsb but it did. I also played games such as NBA live and NFS. The temperature did not rise.

Next is I tried further overclocking it to 2Ghz. by increasing again the fsb to 166Mhz. but this time I adjusted the "CPU/DRAM Ratio" to 5/4 just to be sure the ram can handle it (I am not sure yet what exactly does the CPU/DRAM Ratio does) but still the system ran stable and at no significant increase in temperature! I was so darn surpirsed, I was expecting that the system wont boot due to the ram (cause I have a one PC266 ram).

Now I tried another test and I overclocked it down to 1.92Ghz but this time the "CPU/DRAM ratio" at 1:1. And again surprisingly the system boot (but I did not let it boot up to windows)

Right now I am running the system at 1.8 Ghz only.

Now my question and my wonderings are:

1. How come the processor was able to get overclocked at that speeds with no glitch and no significant increase in temperature does that mean it has more overclocking potential?

or could it be that the processor is not really 1.6Ghz and that the guy who sold it to me does not know the real speed of the processor? if it is then is there a way to know exactly what is the real speed of the processor?

2. How come one of my RAM are able to run at significantly/excessively higher FSB eventhough it is rated at PC266 only? or the montherboard just automatically adjust dram ratio when it detects overclocking?

3. What is CPU/DRAM ratio for? and does it have any overclocking use?

I think I'll be trying out more overclocking with this and see how far can this get.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I had a 1.6ghz Duron. I was able to get it over 2.1ghz at stock voltage. They were pretty good budget overcockers. If I remember, I only paid about $35 for the chip and would run with a 175mhz + fsb. (I had DDR 400 in there)

 

[Zap]

1) Those chips were good overclockers. Much of the heat comes from increased voltages.

2) The motherboard may have done some auto adjusting. RAM can also be overclocked, and slower stuff is usually easier to overclock than faster stuff. It wasn't uncommon BITD to see DDR266 Crucial RAM clock to DDR333+ speeds.

3) Use basic math to figure out RAM speed based off CPU FSB. It is useful for overclocking because though RAM is overclockable, it may not be as overclockable as the CPU.

 

[F1shF4t]

1. Same reason i can overclock my X2 from 2ghz to 2.7ghz, good chip, which could have been used in a faster cpu, but was made a slowed due to demand.

2. I had old kingston 266 value ram which could run at ddr400 speeds, stable with more voltage. Some ram can overclock very well others are complete duds, it really depends on ur luck, unless u buy the expencive stuff which was tested at higher speeds.

3. I have to run a ration otherwise my system wonr go past bios, if ram starts limiting u use a devider to run it at lower speed while still be able to get higher on the cpu.


Make sure u check if ur overclock is stable, by using Prime 95 or any other good prog for that. Also run ram testing software to see if ur ram is stable.

 

[Battousai001]

I have read that Applebred's locked 256k cache can be unlock by connecting cut L2 bridges, and if the cache are defective try 128k cache. I dont know if this is advisable and if there would be a performance boost? I also saw some benchmarks that Applebred's catches up with XP's in performance. BTW my Applebred looks like I cant write a pencil on it anymore as it is the newer design color green and the bridges are covered. It looks like this: http://www.vtr-hardware.com/media/images/news/1/3362.jpg I have read on some forums that you can scratch it off but it sounds risky.

Here is the link I found that says he unlocked the cache with the same looking applebred: http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=46567 I just dont know if its a fake.