need help overclocking pIII 600eb

[replacement10]

i have asus p3v4x motherboard. please help me overclock. i have never overclocked before, so step by step instructions would be nice. thanks.

 

[slimbim]

Hey.

I have had PIII 600EB, and I don't think you can overclock these very well, if at all. EB's are already set at 133MHz FSB. If it was just 600E, then you could bump it up to 800 by increasing the FSB, since its default is 100MHz....

But I am new to overclocking too, so don't really depend on my experience.

Slim

 

[techwanabe]

That's the story. The PIII 600EB has a native FSB of 133 mhz. The reason folks got the 600E (100 mhz FSB) is that there is much more "headroom" to overclock. In the olden days, before the clock multiplier was locked, then we weren't dependant on the FSB to OC a CPU. If you had the E versions, you would have all the room between 100 and 133 mhz to OC, plus a little more, without overstressing the memory and mobo. With the 133 based CPU like yours, you only have a little room to OC.

Your mobo, the ASUS P3V4X is a good stable OC mobo. When you get above 145 mhz FSB, the clock chip on the mobo can sometimes get hot and prevent a good stable OC... in that case, you would need to put a Heat Sink on that chip. But generally, your mobo can CO to 155 FSB. The other issue is your memory. If you don't have HQ PC133 memory, you probably won't get beyond 145 FSB. Otherwise you'll need to buy some PC150 memory so you can really push things up. Good memory and mobo will make it possible.

Let me illustrate the disadvantage of the EB version of the PIII. Lets say you start at 133 mhz FSB running at 600 mhz CPU speed with your PIII600EB. Say you are only able to get a stable overclock at 145 mhz FSB. That is only a 10% increase in CPU speed giving you about 655 mhz - not very much. Now lets say you take a PIII 600E - even if you you only OC it to 133 mhz FSB, that will be a 33% increase allowing your CPU to run at 800 mhz speed! Lets say you successfully OC to 145 mhz FSB - that would put your CPU at 870 mhz! Pretty nice, and not at all unrealistic - tho not assured either.

Now you can see why folks interested in OCing bought the 600E, not the 600EB. The long and short of it is that you can still OC your CPU, but you won't get very much mileage out of it. You'd be better off getting a later stepping PIII 1.0 ghz, or a Celeron 1 ghz (non Tualy) and OCing it. If you don't have a slotket, you may need one since the ASUS P3V4X is slot one and most CPUs are S370 nowadays - and they are getting hard to find.