Soltek & 1800 XP OC (COmplete Newbie)

[Heymish]

Hey guys

First of all, great site for us NZ people :)

Now ... here goes

I just bought a new system and built it myself. It was my first go at hardware stuff, and want to try some OC.

Heres the system specs:

Soltek SL-75 DRV5
Athlon XP 1800+
512 DDR Ram
320W ATX Case
GeForce 4 MX420 64 MB :( (i couldnt afford better :()
and all the other bits ... :)

I heard the soltek was good for OC'ing and wanted to see whats involved.
Remember i am a complete newbie (but built system myself)

Sorry for being so stupid .. lol ... but i have to start somewhere

Any help would be largely apreciated :)

Thanks
heymish

[Volodkovich]

hmm...from wat i hear the DRV-5 aint that good for OCing...just have a look at some of the other threads in this section - there seems to be a bit of problem getting some real high OCs outta that board.

[Volodkovich]

Ohh yea, welcome to the OCNZ Forums :) its a real cool place.
Mite wanna check the Overclocking FAQ thread...it'll get u started :D

[Heymish]

thx m8 - ill look for that faq :)

[Heymish]

"more coming soon" !! lol
what a joke

there aint nofin there !!! grrr :(

anyone else ... lol

[Volodkovich]

well here (http://www.sysopt.com/articles/athlonoc/) is an article on athlon OCing...should get u started, just have a look around on google, and u should find some stuff. Read that...then come back when u need more help..lol :)

[Wibber]

heh, try going into the bios and in a menu called frequency and voltage (or something like that) and raise your fsb in 5mhz jump till you machine don't run properly no more..... if you want a better explanation, pester KJ

[Heymish]

thx dude - will read it tommorow :D

[Humantuckshop]

Originally posted by Heymish
I heard the soltek was good for OC'ing


Well, that depends. If your DRV5 has the 'CD' revision of the KT333 Northbridge, you may aswell just forget about overclocking. The 'CD' revision chipsets are absolute dogs.
Hopefully your board will have the 'CE' revision chipset. This chipset is newer and will overclock quite nicely, I think you'll find - however, don't expect super high FSB's out of that XP1800+. To tap its full potential you will need to 'unlock' it. This basically involves connecting the L1 bridges that are on the CPU itself, with a conductive pen or laquer. It's not that difficult really.

In regards to what is involved:
Firstly make sure you have good cooling. ie: a good 'aftermarket' HSF (HeatSinkFan). This is extremely important - good examples are: the ThermalTake Volcano 7+, the GlobalWin CAKII-38, The Alpha 8045, aaaand a whole bunch of other coolers that someone else can tell you about. ;) And you will probably want some good case ventilation aswell. ie: case fans intaking cool air and exhausting warm air.

Once that's taken care of look through your motherboards BIOS menu and find all the Voltage, CPU and FSB settings. I personally have not used the DRV5, so if someone who has could give you some specifics of those settings that would be nice. :D But basically you need to change the FSB setting, and increase the CPU voltage. Also if you are using PC2100 RAM you may also need to increase the RAM Voltage.

Remember: When you increase your FSB, your AGP and PCI buses are also effected - this means your vid card, PCI cards and drives will be running out of spec aswell.

[Heymish]

thanks m8 - thats some good info. I'll go have a look see what my chipset revision is :D

thx

[Grrr!!]

Originally posted by Heymish
"more coming soon" !! lol
what a joke

there aint nofin there !!! grrr :(

anyone else ... lol

You want ME to do something about that :D

[Wibber]

I disagree HTS, just bacuse the CD revison is no good for fsb overclocking doesn't mean he has to forget about overclocking, he just needs to, as you mentioned unlock it and run it at a higher multi, not as fast a fsb overclocked system, but much better then stock for sure

[Volodkovich]

or stick a 220watt peltier on the northbridge....

[Grrr!!]

I wouldn't even bother trying with the CD revision. But we should find out if that is what he has first.

[Cement]

How does one tell what revision you have ? Do you have to take the northbridge cooler off or can you simply run a diagnostic utility on it ?

[mird-OC]

AFAIK the only way to tell is by removing the northbridge cooler and having a look. a bit of arsing around, but it won't take long.

[Humantuckshop]

^^^^^

What he said. The only way to check the revision of the Northbridge is to take off the cooler and have a look.