So I recently landed an Abit NF7-S v2.0 with Athlon "35W" XP-M 2400+ (stepping FJQ4C) off ebay. It was supposed to replace the aging mobo in the old desktop. Little did I know that this was/is a very popular OC combination! Now it would be a shame to let this combo run at its stock speed, isn't it ? :) I am an absolute newbie to OCing and if it had not been just by luck that I got this combination I might have never even thought about it. So I have been fooling around with it since I got it and here's what I have done so far - I have 786MB PC2100(133/266) that I wanted to re-use from the old box. I found out that the Max FSB it can handle consistently is 162/324. The timings are set to "Turbo" in bios (5-2-2). And DDR voltage is set to 2.9 in the bios although bios does not have any option to increase it above that. (I guess it doesn't get any better than that, does it ?) I have left the multiplier to 13.5 for now. It doesn't like anything above that, but more about it later. I also found out that the minimum Vcore required for the above settings was 1.64 (as reported by Sandra, but set to 1.675 in bios). And it has a Volcano 7+ and the temp is at ~102°F with the fan at Low or Med. (way too noisy at High). System temp is at a cool 75°F. Its purring along at 2.2Ghz right now. Now here's where I am not comfortable fooling around with it any more. I need proper guidance to go further. So what's next ? Increase the multiplier ? Increase Vcore ? How far can I go with this HSF ? It almost seems like a multiplier of 14 or more requires a lot more Vcore (and thus more power and cooling). So does this mean I have reached the point of diminishing returns ? Sorry for the long winded post... TiA!

To increase performance, you need to increase the FSB...that means you need better RAM so that you can maintain a 1:1 ratio. Ideally, you should clock your CPU at 2.2GHz (11 x 200MHz) with PC3200 RAM at 200MHz & the RAM timings at 2.5-3-3-11. Do NOT use any auto settings or Turbo settings, configure the memory settings manually. Make sure to lock the AGP at 66MHz (some recommend 67MHz) & disable all Spread Spectrum settings. EDIT: If you did get PC3200, you could seek out the max speed it will run at, then adjust the CPU clock settings as necessary. For instance, if you found that the RAM will run at 220MHz, you could reclock the CPU to 10 x 220MHz.

I was running a 2400+ XP-M on my last two rigs. First with an Asus A7N8X-X, then I moved it to a Shuttle AN35N Ultra...both are nForce2 boards. I didn't push it too far - I was happy with 2.2GHz (10 x 220MHz) but they can usually go higher. 2.5GHz is possible with the right config & many have gone as high as 2.7GHz, but it requires a heavy voltage boost. A few links: http://www.cluboverclocker.com/revi... http://hardware.mcse.ms/archive26-2... http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/H...

thanks for the links. So ideally you should use the max speed memory that mobo can support and try to raise the fsb to that speed, right ? Since right now I have the cpu running at ~2.2Ghz anyway with the FSB at 162/364Mhz and a FSB:DRAM ratio of 1:1, it means I am only(?) loosing about 40/80Mhz "memory speed". I suppose that would still make a significant difference in the overall system performance.

Think of it this way....your config with CPU at 2.2GHz/162MHz freq with 1:1 ratio is 19% slower than 2.2GHz/200MHz freq with 1:1 ratio. Plus, you're overvolting the hell out of your RAM to get it to run at 162MHz.