What's the most overclockable motherboard out there....
What's the most overclockable motherboard out there....
I've owned a few K6-3+ CPU's over the past few years. I recently decided to start another K6 project and I want to see how far I can push one reliably. I see the Asus boards can do a 133 mhz bus. Anyone have exerpiece with these? I'm looking to make a 700 mhz K6. Watercooling is a definite. I'm not sure about peltier cooling yet. Any ideas? The board must be stable.
Jam a bastard in it you crap!
One of the problems you will have is the motherboard cache, which generally needs to be turned off if you attempt to overclock by too much. You might be able to reduce the timings on it too, but either way you have to pay a penalty.
Your presumption that heat is the limitation with regards to overclocking a K6 contradicts my experience with them. They can be well below their thermal limits and still fail miserably. In fact, every .18 K6 I tried ran cool overclocked. I tried using a massive cooler to see if that helped, but no luck.
Incidentally, even voltages seem to stop helping after a while. I got a K6-III+ ATZ (supposed to run at 1.6v) up to 550 MHz at 2.0v, but going higher did nothing, even all the way to 2.3v. I have three of them, and they all acted the same way pretty much. 1.6v ran at 450 MHz, 1.8v for 500 MHz, 2.0v at 550 MHz. No amount of cooling or voltage increase budged them, although one did POST at 600 MHz at 2.1v, and even booted a bit into Windows (2.2v and 2.3v did absolutely nothing further though). A K6-III+ APZ 450, on the other hand, ran fine at 600 MHz at 2.0v.
So, I would not count on water cooling to help you too much since the chips run really cool anyway (even at 600 MHz for the APZ) and temperature was not a limiting factor in the tests I ran (nor was voltage, after a point). You will need some luck acquring a good chip, since only 1 out 4 I got will run at 600 MHz regardless of what I do to them. There is some guy on Ebay that sells the 450 MHz APZs, or at least he did, brand new. I am not sure if it is coincidence that it ran better than the ATZs, but it would seem to me that it may be a better chip from a better part of the wafer. Since I only have one, I can only speculate.
Your presumption that heat is the limitation with regards to overclocking a K6 contradicts my experience with them. They can be well below their thermal limits and still fail miserably. In fact, every .18 K6 I tried ran cool overclocked. I tried using a massive cooler to see if that helped, but no luck.
Incidentally, even voltages seem to stop helping after a while. I got a K6-III+ ATZ (supposed to run at 1.6v) up to 550 MHz at 2.0v, but going higher did nothing, even all the way to 2.3v. I have three of them, and they all acted the same way pretty much. 1.6v ran at 450 MHz, 1.8v for 500 MHz, 2.0v at 550 MHz. No amount of cooling or voltage increase budged them, although one did POST at 600 MHz at 2.1v, and even booted a bit into Windows (2.2v and 2.3v did absolutely nothing further though). A K6-III+ APZ 450, on the other hand, ran fine at 600 MHz at 2.0v.
So, I would not count on water cooling to help you too much since the chips run really cool anyway (even at 600 MHz for the APZ) and temperature was not a limiting factor in the tests I ran (nor was voltage, after a point). You will need some luck acquring a good chip, since only 1 out 4 I got will run at 600 MHz regardless of what I do to them. There is some guy on Ebay that sells the 450 MHz APZs, or at least he did, brand new. I am not sure if it is coincidence that it ran better than the ATZs, but it would seem to me that it may be a better chip from a better part of the wafer. Since I only have one, I can only speculate.
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Guest
Yeah I picked up a PA-2013 last week. As much as I didn't want a FIC board it was available so until I find something better it will do. I had to disable the motherboard cache in order to run a 124 mhz bus. I noticed the heat thing too on my last K6 III+. Maybe going with a peltier will give me the results I want. I also picked up one of my old K6 III+'s last week so now I have 2 to screw with. I'm holding off on the water cooling until I can come up with a better hold down system for my old Dangerden block.
In even older hardware news my dual PPro's with 1 meg of cache arrived yesterday. Now I'm just waiting on the board....
In even older hardware news my dual PPro's with 1 meg of cache arrived yesterday. Now I'm just waiting on the board....