this is ridiculous , just to warn you, but i want to overclock a dell dimension 4100 with stock parts to...oh something past 2.4 ghz :) haha, can it be done? i want to go the highest without frying the chip

I don't think you'll be able to change any frequency settings on your mobo, as they are usually locked on dell. Asus P5K SE E6750@3.3GHz 4096MB A-Data Extreme 800 GF 7900GTX OC'd XP Pro & Vista x64

To start with, you'll have to tell us which CPU you have & what type of RAM. It certainly doesn't help that you put "196? lol" for the CPU/RAM. It makes you seem clueless about your own system specs. And as xuiparishi alluded to, the Dell BIOS is usually "crippled" to prevent too much user tampering. Chances are, the only way you'll be able to overclock is thru software such as ClockGen, SoftFSB, CPUFSB, etc.

The dimension 4100 uses Pentium III processors at up to 1GHz. You can forget about overclocking it to 2.4GHz--it won't happen. Let me make my usual recommendation to P3 users needing/wanting more speed. Head over to eBay and buy an FC-PGA2 adaptor along with a 1.4GHz Tualatin core P3. The Tualatin P3 (especially the "S" version with 512K L2) is much faster per clock cycle than the Coppermine P3 that's currently installed in your Dell. A 1.4GHz Tualatin P3 would be as fast as a Coppermine P3 running at around 2.0GHz, or a P4 running at around 2.2GHz. That's close enough to 2.4GHz, isn't it? :) Before you do any of that, upgrade your RAM to the board's maximum capacity of 512MB! Thanks to eBay, I could afford to SLi my PC and eat artistic toast. Opteron 185 @ 3.0GHz 2X 8800GTS-640MB Asus A8N32-SLI deluxe 4GB of PC3200 OCZ 800GB local storage X-Fi, Vista X64

What jackbomb said. Tualatin's are basicly the original Pentium M's, than they evolved into the core's and core2 CPUs. A very good CPU for the price. Core 2 Duo 1.86

Hi, jackman! This is really timely as I have been searching all over the internet for this sort of information! I want to ugrade my Compaq Deskpro EN P3 1.0 GhZ to a P3-S 1.4, so my system can handle Rome: Total War. Would you recommend a particular video card for my dinosaur? It has to be AGP and at least 128 MB. Any suggestions are welcome. Also: Do you have any idea how high you can overclock the P3-S 1.4? keep up the good work, mate! regards, Gabriel gabriel.mckee@hotmail.com specs: P3 1.0 Ghz ''Coppermine'' 512 MB PC133 Compaq Despro EN Yes, it could almost be carbon dated!