Old-school duallie OC-ing

[Eva_Unit_0]

So I have a dual pentium III box sitting around here and I just recently decided I'd see exactly what these coppermines can do with this Tiger 100 (it actually gives FSB adjustments!) I have to admit I was surprised. System specs are as follows:

Tyan Tiger 100. Dual slot 1, legendary 440BX chipset
2 x Coppermine 800E's (8 x 100 default)
2 x 256mb Kingston Value Ram pc100
GF4 ti4200 128mb
Audigy
160gb Hitachi Deskstar

The bios on this board is incredible...it gives just about every imaginable setting on the BX, including fsb adjustments up to the famous 133mhz mark. The adjustments are rather coarse, though, going up to 112 in like 3mhz steps, and then going straight to 133. It was running great at 112, so I thought "what the hell, let's go for it" and went for 133. Sure enough, it worked like a charm. I know the BX and the coppermines are good overclockers, but I mean this is crazy...here's the BX (and a board originally designed for PII's) driving TWO PIII's at 133fsb and two 256mb sticks of PC100 at 133 as well. Craziness.

Take a looksie

1.066ghz per cpu...not bad. Tie in the 512mb of ram and the ti4200. and it actually makes a pretty decent box to use when I'm at home from college for a break. (like now)

 

[unhappy_mage]

Looks like fun! Too bad my p3s are 133 FSB already. And they're on a "server board", also known as a "no fun board"

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

Yeah having the 100fsb chips really helped a lot...especially on a BX where anything over 133 is just not going to happen, period. I originally thought this was a "no fun" board too...hell, it's a tyan board. But strangely enough it has everything short of voltage adjustments...and considering I've maxxed out the board on stock voltage that's apparently not an issue.

 

[ND40oz]

Hey, I have that board . What revision do you have? I'm pretty sure my C will only support up to my 600 mhz chips, but I'd love to swap them out to something faster.

Anyway, do you have active cooling on your chips? I had the stock passive heatsinks on and I couldn't get it stable. Had to switch out to dual fan coolers, but the temps are good in my Antec 3700. I might have to go down and see what I can clock those suckers up to. What kind of temps are you getting?

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

I'm pretty sure it's a rev. D...where exactly would I check on it to verify? It's not silkscreened next to the model number like normally is done.

Yeah, they're actively cooled. Looks like standard-issue intel stock cooler...They work very well but the little ~60mm fans are rather whiny. Right now the computer isn't in a case (just sitting on the top of my desk) because fedex apparently had a delightful game of soccer with the box I shipped the system home in. Anyway, the temps are kinda tricky to read...mbm APPEARS to work right, but in reality they don't as the temps don't vary even 1C between idle and load. Sandra appears to read them correctly, though, and then appear to idle at ~38C and load at like ~45C. I haven't done any extensive temp testing yet, though...that's still on the to-do list.

 

[wetware_interface]

why would i be surpirsed that a 440 bx chipset paired with 800e's would be able to hit 133mhz fsb?

that's a very common overclock if your board has a divider of 1/2 for the agp.

what would be surprising is a 440 bx server board able to run at 150 Mhz fsb. there were several server/worstation boards that ran 133 on the bx chipset.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

that's a very common overclock if your board has a divider of 1/2 for the agp.

what would be surprising is a 440 bx server board able to run at 150 Mhz fsb. there were several server/worstation boards that ran 133 on the bx chipset.

See this board doesn't have the 1/2 agp divider...only the 2/3. I've verified in sandra that the agp bus is definitely running at 88mhz and the pci at 44. In fact, I was getting some mild popping through my audigy because of the pci bus, but playing with the pci latency settings in the bios fixed the issue. Surprisingly, this ti4200 doesn't seem to mind the agp being so far out of spec...though older cards are known for being more tolerant of that, as are nvidia cards in general.