Upgrading from PIII to T'Bird! Need Advice on O'C Sweet Spot!

[rpr]

OK, I've decided to go AMD. I've been reading reviews and posts all night though and I still don't know where the current sweet spot is for overclocking T'Birds.

I'm used to 40% to 50% overclocks with my last 2 Intel systems (300a@450 and 600E@841). I know that's not going to happen with a T'Bird but I still want to make sure I get the most bang for my buck. Any suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'm also looking at the KT133a chipset motherboards (read AnandTech's review saying the 133fsb gives you almost as much performance increase at the 760 chipsets with DDR RAM). Any thoughts on this would also be appreciated. Tx.

 

[rpr]

ttt

 

[Truro]

Bought my first amd the other day. An Epox 133a and a 1000 t bird. It's loafing along at 1200 untweaked with mosel vital ram. The Epox happened to be the best price/availability at the time I ordered.

You'll want to buy a 100 bus t bird and unlock it, saving a $100, get a defogger kit. The Epox and to some extent other 133a boards have a problem as follows. When powered on, the cpu boots at hardware multiplier/bus speed for a moment until the bios settings take over. That means if your 100 bus amd won't run for a moment at the speed 133 makes it run, you have problems.

You cut/and or join circuits on the cpu die to change the default multiplier. For my 1 gig, all I had to do was close one circuit to change the 10 multiplier to an 8. I could have made it a 7 by closing another.

If you have to open one, like on a 1.2 gig, you have to cut through the ceramic a few thousands to sever the connection, takes a tool and some patience.

If you've read the reviews you've seen the features the boards have. You'll have fun with the Thunderbird. Install the 4 in 1 drivers when you get into Windows. W98SE needs a usb patch from microsoft.

Overclock outcome varies. Sounds like you'll be pushing it so get a good fan/sink. Maybe a Taisol and artic silver.

 

[BCYL]

I got my T-bird 700 a couple of weeks ago, with the Asus A7V mobo...

Currently it is running at 909Mhz (8.5 * 107 FSB )... nice and stable without any problems...

I dont have those mobo's with the FSB that be overclocked to 133Mhz... but getting another 200Mhz free is pretty good already in my mind... hope this helps...

 

[grendelkhan]

This is my first AMD rig since my 486DX4-100, and overall I am very happy. Went with the 1GHz and KT7A-RAID board for the softmenu overclocking and extra IDE controllers. Running at 1066 (8@133) and getting great results with all my benchmarking and stability factors.

Only advice if you pick this board, is that the ACPI/RAID-0 with each HD as a master on it's own IDE channel seems to give people alot of headaches. I know it gave me one. But running the drives straight up on the HOT370 controller has had zero issues.

My last system was a PIII-500, and this one has, overall, been just as easy and trouble free.

 

[rpr]

Thanks for the replies. I think I'm starting to lean toward the Asus A7V133 with a 750Mhz T'Bird. I've seen quite a few posts where people are claiming they are consistently getting 1Ghz+ with the 750 T'Bird.

 

[BCYL]

Getting 1Ghz with the T-bird 750 is very reasonable...

As you can see from my earlier post, I have my 700 @ 909Mhz and it's rock stable... if I can get better cooling I would be able to get close to 1Ghz...

so you should be able to hit 1Ghz with 750 without a problem...

 

[osage]

for the money a 600-650 Duron at 1000mhz is pretty sweet.