I have a 900mhx Duron, with PC100 SDRAM. My motherboard is jumperless, so I only can OC using BIOS settings. Since my RAM is only PC100, someone said that overclocking by changing the bus speed will actually slow down my PC. Is this true? I am now at 956Mhz and my Pc seems normal. It is running at 49C is that ok? Thanks

the person who said this to you must know nothing about computers because overclockng is always a performance boost as long as your system is stable. If you have overclocked the fsb you probably have boosted you're whole system performance. But i have a friend who overclocked an athlon 800mhz to 1600mhz so if you have the right cooling you could reach this speed also!

I'm gonna rebut Gareth: Overclocking can reduce performance, and heres how: You have PC100 ram and lets say its memory timings are cas2 at 100MHz but cas3 at anything higher. Assuming your ram will not overclock as much as your cpu you may be able to get up to 110 on your fsb which will increase your cpu speed to about 990MHz, but your ram will now be using the slower memory timings. This will offset most of your performance gain from the cpu boost and maybe even degrade performance. As you push the fsb higher the gains in cpu speed will be enough to counteract the slower ram speed so you could end up with a faster system. But if you can only overclock the fsb a few MHz it is not worth it. Higher rated ram should let you overclock to a point you actually see a gain.

And to add to that, HOW did your friend get an 800 mhz cpu up to 1600mhz, especially an Athlon. Sorry mate, don't believe that for a second. Pure fantasy.

unless he spent like $300 on peltier/water cooling in which case he's an idiot because it would have been cheaper to by a new cpu/mobo.

No I still don't believe it even w/ peltier

Well since nobody else seemed to want to comment about the heating issue I'll add that 49 degrees C is way too hot for your Duron. Ive got a 700MHZ Duron running at 900MHZ and its only 38C. If your going to overclock get a better heatsink and Fan. You'll have nothing but trouble with a CPU temp that hot. Don't risk cooking your CPU for 56MHZ. All that extra heat WILL ruin your performance.