OC'ing the Pentium 3

4

4keatimj

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 16, 2003
Messages
1,327
Hi all,
I overclocked my P3 on the weekend (yay!!!) to get 526 mhz out of it. I'm an overclocking newbie, this was my first one, and i like to take it in small steps cause the CPU is old and may just blow up :p ....
Anyway, i was wondering if anyone has had any experience with OC'ing Pentium 3's. If you have, how much can i expect to get out of it? I've got 1 stick of PC133, and two sticks of RAM that i'm not entirely sure, i think it may be PC133 as well. So what can i expect to get up to? BTW i've ran it for over 9 hours now in total, running benchmarks, doing work and it hasn't locked up or been unstable. All RAM timings are aggressive and BIOS tweaks have been paerformed. Any tips in oc'ing the P3
 
i got ~840 MHz out of my pIII 550E back in the day.... is yours a coppermine or a katmai core?
 
katmai's didnt overclock well at all. ive overclocked my fair share of coppermine celerons before.

600@1020
633@1000
1100@1230 (yes a coppermine celeron 1.1ghz)
 
I got my p3 450mhz to 577mhz, Katmai core and all. I don't see that as a great overclock, but I remember back then it kicked ass to be at almost 600 instead of 450. :D

I also oc'ed celerys a few times. I had a celery 566 @ 930 and then I had a celery 1.2ghz (yes 1.2ghz) at 1.6ghz. Yes 1.6ghz, it would beat out p4s up to about 1.9ghz. Pretty sure that 1.2ghz was a tualatin core.

pcOCed.jpg


My system now.

2425mips.bmp
 
I used to overclock the dickens out of my 650e's..
I don't remember katmai's doing so well though
 
I have a coppermine PIII 1 ghz. Unless by some fortune I get a board that can take this CPU and OC it, I probably won't ever run it at anything other than 997 mhz. :p
 
you guys just inspired me to OC my P3 500. I'll load up CPU-Z and check out what I can do.

I think it's running on PC-100 though :(
 
My P3 450 made 630 and the 800 did 1120. with the big Alpha P3125 cooler.
Loved that cooler, pity i coldnt get it to fit th P4
 
Update

I oc'd that P3 500 of mine. Dip switches, whoopie!

I had it at 5x133 (I had 1 stick of PC133 ram that I was using, clocked at 3-3-3-8). So, 665MHz, but unfortunately it wouldn't completely POST every time (hung on device detection).

So I lowered it to the next lowest, which was 5x124MHz (620MHz).

That booted into Windows and I started up Prime. As seen in another thread, the temp sensors might've been wonky, but I don't know.

Anyways it got up to 76c... which I wasn't comfortable with, so I just took it back to 5x100 stock speeds. It's too bad though... I don't know if my sensors are truly that whacked, or if it really was running that hot!
 
My PII 400 made 527.
I got screwed, and sent the wrong processor, and got a 600 Katmai instead of a CuMine. Sold both of those and got a PIII 800 straight away. It went to 1066 , and someone is still running it. Got a 1.2 Celatin, and it went to 1.6 with no effort at all. Got a 1.1 as well to see if I could get more FSB from it, but it only went to 1.5. Someone traded me a 733 Celeron for a Duron 600, and it's running as a lan machine at 1463. :eek: That was a no-brainer OC as well. I just slapped a volcano7 on it that had been on a Pally, and upped to 1.85.
 
Originally posted by NewBlackDak
My PII 400 made 527.
I got screwed, and sent the wrong processor, and got a 600 Katmai instead of a CuMine. Sold both of those and got a PIII 800 straight away. It went to 1066 , and someone is still running it. Got a 1.2 Celatin, and it went to 1.6 with no effort at all. Got a 1.1 as well to see if I could get more FSB from it, but it only went to 1.5. Someone traded me a 733 Celeron for a Duron 600, and it's running as a lan machine at 1463. :eek: That was a no-brainer OC as well. I just slapped a volcano7 on it that had been on a Pally, and upped to 1.85.
Click to expand...

1463 out of a celeron 733? you sure that wasnt a celeron 1.1?
 
Thanx guys, i'm a bit cautious because i don't have a temp sensor on the CPU and i use stock cooling. But i've got one stick of 133, and two sticks of unknown speed (probably PC100, but not entirely sure), so the limit probably is 125mhz. My timings are 2-2-2-2, and the memory idle timer is set to infinite. I'll see if i can get more out of it soon, running at 525mhz it is really stable.
 
What bus increments does your mobo have? That's a big part of the problem, but I'm assuming there are at least 5-6 settings... Anyways, it really depends on the cooling you use. I used a stock intel heatsink to get a friend's p3 500 to 560 (mainly limited by bus speed selection), but getting a pretty cheap vantec heatsink and a decent fan brought it up to ~630. I would expect that with decent cooling (ie, the current equivalent of "stock" cooling) you could get it at least up to 600. You may want to relax the memory timings though because you have mismatched (and unknown speed) sticks in there. 2-2-2 at 124 is most likely not doable with pc100.
 
okay, thanx. The speed increments are (i think) 103, 105 (which i'm on now), 110, 115, 120, 124, 125, 133, 140, 143, 150, all in mhz. Again, i can't exactly remember them but i think these are right. I'm hoping to get 600 mhz with stock cooling, and i'll relax the timings. Sorry to sound so newbie but how will this help? Again, thanx for advice.
 
good luck with that
my secondary pc is a p3 700 @ 880 with a 256mb stick of pc133 and an ATI AIW 8500dv

i had 512 ram in there but it was pc100 and i was only able to clock it to about 850.

if i get another 256 stick of pc133 u think ill be able to get it to 933? currently at 933 its unstable but its been running at 880 for awhile now
 
You can overclock P3s :D

Proper RAM will help. Some companies used to sell PC150, so if you can find that, set that bus to 150 and if the mobo will do it, and your components don't mind the higher PCI/AGP speeds, you'll be fine.

Otherwise your best bet to get to 150 is to get some high quality PC133 SDRAM with tight timings, and see if increasing the latency will allow a higher clockspeed.
 
Originally posted by TheAcorn
You can overclock P3s :D

Proper RAM will help. Some companies used to sell PC150, so if you can find that, set that bus to 150 and if the mobo will do it, and your components don't mind the higher PCI/AGP speeds, you'll be fine.

Otherwise your best bet to get to 150 is to get some high quality PC133 SDRAM with tight timings, and see if increasing the latency will allow a higher clockspeed.
Click to expand...

I always thought PC150 used a different pinout than PC133. :p Shows how much I know about PC150. :p

IIRC, there are some links to sites that have PC150 on pricewatch.com.
 
Originally posted by acascianelli
1463 out of a celeron 733? you sure that wasnt a celeron 1.1?
Click to expand...

It's a late stepping, so I was expecting to get 1.0 to 1.1 out of it, but it just kept going. I set it at 1.9v, and kept pushing it until it wouldn't go anymore. It gets flaky at 1485, and will post(but not boot) at 1500. Goes to 45C full load. I've tried running it at 2.0v, but the heat output climbs exponentially at those voltages. It's running in a BX133-R with some Crucial PC-133 with an 8500, and still plays games very well. Heck of a machine for something I put together out of old parts.
 
Originally posted by NewBlackDak
It's a late stepping, so I was expecting to get 1.0 to 1.1 out of it, but it just kept going. I set it at 1.9v, and kept pushing it until it wouldn't go anymore. It gets flaky at 1485, and will post(but not boot) at 1500. Goes to 45C full load. I've tried running it at 2.0v, but the heat output climbs exponentially at those voltages. It's running in a BX133-R with some Crucial PC-133 with an 8500, and still plays games very well. Heck of a machine for something I put together out of old parts.
Click to expand...

Damn. That's almost a 100% overclock. That's very impressive.
 
What about voltages? What are all you guys running at? I only have one jumper, VIO, that controls the voltage of the processor, RAM, and other in/out functions. Vcore is currently at 1.6V, but if it becomes unstable, will changing the Voltage In/Out help? I have no control for the Vcore.
 
I had an ASUS P2B-F with a PIII 450Mhz. Using the stock HSF I was able to OC it to 550Mhz with no problem. I'd bet you could get 600Mhz easy.
 
Originally posted by 4keatimj
What about voltages? What are all you guys running at? I only have one jumper, VIO, that controls the voltage of the processor, RAM, and other in/out functions. Vcore is currently at 1.6V, but if it becomes unstable, will changing the Voltage In/Out help? I have no control for the Vcore.
Click to expand...

I have my Barton at 1.95v. That's as high as I'm willing to go on this chip.
 
Alpha P3125. Simply untouchable :cool: I had a PIII 600 at 900, although one of my memory sticks was always flaky. The other one was a black PCB 256MB stick of Tonicom RAM :cool:.
 
I remember getting my PIII 600 copermine to 837mhz so I was the show off with delta force 2 on that rig
 
Originally posted by 4keatimj
What about voltages? What are all you guys running at? I only have one jumper, VIO, that controls the voltage of the processor, RAM, and other in/out functions. Vcore is currently at 1.6V, but if it becomes unstable, will changing the Voltage In/Out help? I have no control for the Vcore.
Click to expand...

i never went higher than 1.92v on my coppermines
 
oops i made a mistake... the Vcore is at 2V, not 1.6V (i was obviously thinking of my dad's P4...). Looking at other peoples P3's, this seems pretty high, doesn't it? :confused:
 
Okay i oc'd it to 550mhz now. But when i relaxed the timings on the RAM, i noticed a huge drop in performance. After i put it up to 550, i set the RAM timings back to 2-2-2, with DRAM Idle Timer to 10T. Does anyone know if doing so will be detrimental to the system? I lost a few frames per second in UT at DM-Morpheus with 5 bots + me. I also use Final Reality benchmark (yes, i still use that, it is the only benchmark that will run on my rig...) and i easily saw a drop of half a Reality Mark, from 5.62 to 4.9. Is there any point to relaxing the timings as this is a pretty serious drop ino performance here.
 
Originally posted by acascianelli
katmai's didnt overclock well at all. ive overclocked my fair share of coppermine celerons before.

1100@1230 (yes a coppermine celeron 1.1ghz)
Click to expand...

i've got my celeron 1.1 (coppermine) at 1.32. not a huge move, but that's all i can get out of it.
 
yea but ya gotta admitt, thats a bad ass coppermine at that speed...celeron or not
 
Hey all, does upping the AGP frequency from 2:3 to 1:1 help in overclocking? Does it increase transfer rates, or can it damage things? I have this option on my mobo, will this help performance?
 
Originally posted by 4keatimj
Hey all, does upping the AGP frequency from 2:3 to 1:1 help in overclocking? Does it increase transfer rates, or can it damage things? I have this option on my mobo, will this help performance?
Click to expand...

You should leave your AGP frequency as close to spec as you can. I have fried cards in the past by messing with this.
 
My Pre release P3 733 Katmai core never Oc'ed to well, but its cool because on the Serial number stamp area it says Intel Confidential so i feel important. :D
 
Originally posted by Connundrum1
My Pre release P3 733 Katmai core never Oc'ed to well, but its cool because on the Serial number stamp area it says Intel Confidential so i feel important. :D
Click to expand...

a 733 katmai????

got any pics of that?
 
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