OC'ing K6-2/500 & Asus P5A

[bhaney]

Guys,

{Please be gentle, it's my first post...}

Last weekend I rebuilt my old Compaq Presario 5150. I had picked it up used, and upgraded the processor to a K6-2/500 at the time. Never messed with overclocking, I considered myself lucky to get it running in the first place...

Now I've moved to a "new" PC: I picked up a used Asus P5A board, mounted in a new case (250W Power supply), used the old processor and RAM, along with adding two new drives, etc. My question is this: how far do you think this combo can be pushed while still maintaining stability and without dumping much more money into it? The RAM is a mix of Crucial PC100 (128 MB stick) and the old Compaq memory (also PC100 128 MB stick). Will this be a limiting factor? Suggestions for settings to try?

The rest of the system breaks down like this:
AMD K6-2/500 processor
Compaq CD drive
Yamaha 16x IDE burner
WD 40 GIG HD's (x2) on Promise ATA100 IDE controller card
Seagate 8 GB 5400 RPM drive on Asus IDE channel.
Cheap NIC
Compaq 3.5" floppy

If I've omitted any key info, let me know.

Thanks,
-Brett.

 

[AndyHui]

Welcome to AnandTech.

Historically, AMD K6-2 processors don't overclock too well. They are rated too close to their manufactured ceiling in order to get good overclocks out of them.

The best that you can really hope for is around 550MHz. Simply set the FSB to 110MHz and see where you can go from there. If the system is stable, you may want to increase the FSB a little more.

 

[Marrkks]

Historically, AMD K6-2 processors don't overclock too well. They are rated too close to their manufactured ceiling in order to get good overclocks out of them.

before you overclock the fsb you might want to backup you hd(s). unless you don't mind doing a fresh install. oc'ing the fsb will sometimes corrupt some data.

my guess is the mb memory(L2 cache), nic, or Compaq memory would be the first to start to start getting fussy about an oc'ed fsb. what video are you using? you might need to manually lower the refresh rate a tad also.

to find out you best fsb lower the multiplyer (4.5) and slowly increase the fsb. even if the cpu doesn't oc much 4.5x112(500mhz) will be faster than 5x100.

 

[bhaney]

Guys,

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

I'm running a 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 PCI (16 MB) video card. To be honest, I don't play games much on my PC, other than solitaire! I'm more concerned about decompressing large audio files (.shn format) and some Photoshop use. Oh, and CD burning. I did download a "3D Aquarium" screensaver, and it ran like total crap, even at 800x600. Maybe I need to lower the color depth? Anyway, that's another topic alltogether!

Thanks,
-Brett.

 

[rogue1979]

I used to mess with alot of K6-2 chips back in the day. 550-575Mhz is about the best your gonna get. For best performance increase use the fsb to speed up the onboard L2 cache and the system memory. It takes a little work, but if you lap the cpu (it is usually concave and doesn't touch the heatsink well), use 2.5v and a decent heatsink you can almost always reach 5 x 112 for 560MHz, which gives a nice performance boost, about 25% overall because of the fsb overclock.