PIII 700E overclocking

[Baldrick]

Hi,

I'm interested in overclocking my PIII700E. Here's some information about the CPU from Sandra:

Model Information: PC6 (Coppermine) Pentium III E(B) 500-1.13G 1.3-1.75V
Steping Mask: cA2.
CPU Core Voltage: 1.60V
Current temps: 27C

I have an IWill VD133 mobo, which has the ability to increase the FSB in the BIOS. I've current got my FSB at 110 MHz, and my multipiler is locked at 7x. I have 256mb generic RAM (CAS3) and runing Win2k Pro.

When I try to increase the FSB to 115, instead of getting 805Mhz, i get 720, and the computer doesn't boot at an FSB of 124mhz. I notice that some of you have PIII700 @ 933. How can I get my CPU to run at 933? Thanks in advanced.

 

[AkumaX]

<< Steping Mask: cA2 >>



sorry, but the cA2 stepping is pretty bad. those dont really overclock well, and if they do, you would probaby have to increase the voltage pretty high and get some good cooling. cB0's and cC0's and cD0's are good o/cers. does the iwill VD133 supply voltage adjustments? you could try selling that 700 on ebay, then using that $$$ to get another 700 from pricewatch or our fs/ft forums, hehehe

 

[Strych9]

cA2 is not as overclockable as cB0 or cC0 as I recall. Try upping your core voltage if your motherboard allows you to. I have a cB0 that does 933 with no problem at default.

 

[Baldrick]

Thanks for the replies. My mobo allows vcore increments to 10% and it also allows VIO to be increased from 3.4 (default) to 3.8V. What's does the VIO voltage do? Has anyone had any success in overclocking with a cA2 stepping mask?

Edit: When Sandra mentions .... 1.3-1.75V does this mean the cpu will be able to handle the vcore increase of 10%?

 

[AkumaX]

if you do increase the voltage, your cpu will become hotter, so get a good HSF. but in the past, cA2's weren't good o/cers. sorry! its an older cpu stepping, so you wouldnt be able to reach high limits of voltage/fsb w/ that cpu. 1.6v is stock, so maybe 1.75v would be safe. the cB0 and cC0 can go to 1.85 or 1.9v comfortably (w/ good cooling)

 

[DClark]

Yes, as mentioned in the above posts the first iteration of the P3 700 didn't overclock very well. If you can't get a stable overclock at around 1.75v, then I don't think it'll go any further. Also, there never was a cA2 stepped 933mhz P3 (highest cA2 stepped P3 was an 800EB) so I think 800mhz may be around as high as you should expect to go under the best circumstances.

My cB0 stepped P3 700 will do 933mhz with stock voltage (1.65v for the cB0 version) and 980mhz with 1.75v, but even with my voltage maxxed on my motherboard I can't get it stable on a 150mhz fsb. I think P3s will do most of their overclocking limit at the stock voltage +0.1v, but you won't get much further once you have to start upping the voltage by a great margin.

In regards to not booting at 124mhz though, that may just be a PCI card problem; I can't boot up at 124mhz either, but it's because I have a cheap modem which won't allow that high of an overclock on the PCI bus, not because the processor can't handle 124mhz. By booting at 133mhz and changing the AGP divider to 1/2 and the PCI divider to 1/4, the only thing you'll be trying to overclock is the processor (so you'll know for a fact that if it doesn't boot up, it's the processor's fault since everything else is running stock).