KT600 is not a very overclocking friendly chipset if your processor is locked.
Step 1 is downloading some programs for stability testing and identification:
CPU-z
http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php
and
Prime95
http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm
Step 1 would be determining if your processor is locked. set multiplier to 10x and see if you end up at the same MHz or lower in CPU-z.
if you are at a lower MHz (10x166 = 1666 instead of the default 1833 for a 2500+) then you will be best just increasing the multiplier with that board. Increase 0.5 at a time and run Prime95 on the torture test that states maximum heat in the description for a couple hours. iff successful, raise another 0.5
Likely your board will support a maximum multiplier of 12.5 without doing some simple physical modifications.
If your CPU is locked (manufactured after week39 2003) your only option for overclocking is increasing the Front side bus (sometimes just referred to as bus speed). The problem with that on the KT600 is that it also increases the AGP and PCI speeds, which can limit your overclock well under what the CPU is capable of. Also running the PCI bus at too high a speed can increase the chance of hard drive data corruption (as the IDE controller is on the PCI bus). This is a BAD THING (obviously). If your motherboard supports changing the ratio of AGP and PCI, you can set the ratio to what it would be at 200 FSB and be okay from that standpoint.
AGP default speed is 66MHz and PCI is 33MHz. at 166MHz FSB, the AGP is usually at 2/5 and the PCI at 1/5 of FSB. At 200 FSB the AGP is at 1/3 and the PCI at 1/6 of FSB speed. So if there is an option in your BIOS to set AGP to 1/3 then set this before increasing the FSB speed. Some boards would show this 6:2:1 (FSB/AGP/PCI)
Increase your FSB in small steps, maybe 3MHz at a time. go slowly to find the limits. If you are unable to change the AGP/PCI ratio manually, this will likely be a problem, and I wouldn't go beyond about 175-180 or so unless you like potentially facing massive data corruption of your hard drive. You can try 200 MHz, but most recent desktop 2500+ processors will not get there. If your processor is pretty old, I think you have a better shot at going straight to 200 and having success.
When you reach a point where the processor is not stable, you have 2 options:
1) drop down to where you were stable, run Prim95 again for longer, at least overnight, to verify stability. Call that what you're capable of and be happy with your extra speed
2) try increasing the voltage and seeing if you can achieve stability where you were not stable before.
If you choose 2) you need to start being more concerned about heat. Increasing voltage increases the heat load. As you increase the voltage more hte heat load grows even further. This is because at higher heat, the processor is less efficient and at lower efficiency, it generates even more heat... sort of a catch-22, but this is why overclockers have very nice heatsinks, etc... You need to monitor your temperatures and watch how they are changing under heavy load (Prime95 torture test). I use 60C as a limit. I try to stay under 60C even on a warm day under full load.
Most people use around 1.75-1.8 as a max sane voltage on air. With a stock HSF, you may want to consider maxing out at 1.7-1.75 instead.
If you have the capability to lower your AGP/PCI ratio, increasing your FSB will net a larger gain in performance than increasing the multiplier. This is because the RAM will be running at a higher speed as well as the processor. In all cases with an AthlonXP, you want the RAM running at the same speed as the FSB. If you have the option of running the FSB at 166 and the RAM at 200 MHz, you don't really want to. No real gain there.Start with your RAM at whatever timings they are rated for at PC3200 speed. You can try lowering the latencies once you find where your CPU is stable.
Good Luck.
Facebook
Twitter