Overclocking the Tbirds.. Where do I begin??

[Rhodent]

I am trying to get the best performance from my Tbird 900. It is not unlocked for now and has a stock retail heat sink. In windows it is running about 120 degrees F or 49-50 C just installing drivers and stuff for like an hour. How high is a safe temp for this chip? I was told about 55 C was tops so..if thats the case then under heavy load this processor will be that high and so I have no room to boost anything. If I can overclock some, where do I start? Is it best to increase the bus and then maybe drop the voltage to the core or voltage drop first and then increase the bus? Also I have it on default voltage now and it appears to be defaulting to about 1.79 volts. Should I drop that back to begin with and see if the temp will go down? Can anyone sort of give me an idea.. I'd really appreciate it. thanks

 

[LXi]

Begin with telling us what motherboard you have.

 

[Rhodent]

The board is the Microstar K7t Pro 2

 

[LXi]

Go into BIOS and find CPU Clock Ratio. It should be at x9 right now, change it to x9.5, x10, and x10.5 until the CPU cant take it anymore.

Run some CPU intensive games or programs between each increment, make sure it runs stably, then move on.

 

[Rhodent]

I can't change the multiplier yet. I said in the first post that the chip is not unlocked. I am wanting to only deal with bus and voltage right now and remember this is a stock retail HSF so the temp is a factor.

 

[Rhodent]

What do you guys think?

 

[LXi]

Oh, well then go to FSB and choose a clock speed. Go up little by little, using the same technique.

 

[Moonbeam]

What I've read is that the tbird is bus speed sensitive, with 110 being about the most it will take. That's why everybody is telling you to clock multiple overclock it. You might try the possible speeds you have between 100 and 110, but if I were you I'd get a good heatsink fan and lap it mirror smooth, flat. I wouldn't do the processor unless you don't mind taking the chance on ruining it. T%his half way job is safer and still gives good results. Get the artic silver heatsink compound and use the pencil, conductive pen, rear window defroster repair kit method to bridge the L1 connectors and then procede as suggested in earlier posts.

 

[Rhodent]

The voltage when set to default is actually sending the chip 1.79 from what bios reads. Doesn't that seem high. I should be able to drop that back to like 1.70 and see if the chip cools down ? seems like 46C idleing in bios with everything set to stock. is a little high

 

[LXi]

46C is fine, even if you lowered it to 1.7 it'd still wont change much. I set my P3 at 1.6v and it gives me 1.65v!

 

[eyor]

Here is a guide to unlocking it.

 

[Rhodent]

I now have it running at 9X110 for 990 at 1.675 volt setting although it shows to actually be getting 1.72 volts. It seems stable but that was only involving playing a mpeg movie for a couple hours just trying to heat the processor. I need some sort of crash test benchmark.but can't find anything small enough to download through a regular dialup. I went back to bios and it said like 46 C is that a safe temp to run at? What is the highest I should allow it to go, and what kind of range do those processors do.. like.if it idles at 45C how high will it prob go under high stress? thanks anyone