Hi, I hae a gateway 2000 family PC with a mailman motherboard and a pentium 166. using jumpers i found on the motherboard i got it to run fine at 200, but the FSB and multiplier are set as high as the jumpers will allow. There are no options for overclocking in my bios. I was wondering if there was any way i could overclock higher than 200. I can post pics of my system if you need, I think i am running windows 95 but it might be 98, i can check later. I have no clue what type of ram i have.

please help, thank you!

change the multiplier to 1.5x (yes, 1.5x) & see what happens...it may run at 233MHz. If you don't have a 75MHz FSB setting, that's the best you're gonna do.

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why would lowering the multiplier make it run faster? my FSB is set to 66(highest) and my multiplier is set to 3x (also highest) wouldn't changing to 1.5x give a serious drop in speed?

just try it...I knew you would question the logic, that's why I wrote "1.5x (yes, 1.5x)". Actually, I'm assuming this is a 166MMX CPU, not the 166 "Classic". If it doesn't work, you can always change it back....

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what is MMx and what is classic? and if you do the math it doesnt make sense but ok (66*1.5 < 66*3.0)

hey, is there any programs that i could run from within windows to trick it into running faster or am i limited by my crappy motherboard? also, i upgraded my BIOS from 1.00.05.DQ0T to 1.00.07.DQ0T but it doesn't offer any more options, i heard though that the T at the end means it was made for gateway, so if i could find a bios that was 1.00.07.DQ0 would it have all the settings that gateway wanted taken out?

GEEZ! Why couldn't you just taken my word for it so I didn't have to type out a long explanation?

Intel started with the Pentium lineup (not sure at what speed it started) & progress up to 200MHz. At the same time, they developed what they call MMX (Multi-Media Extensions) & added that to the mix...this created the Pentium 166MMX, 200MMX, & then progressed to the 233MMX. The CPUs without the MMX instructions then became known as the "Pentium Classic".

At the time, most motherboards only had a max multiplier of 3.0x, so the max CPU speed was 200MHz (3 x 66MHz). So what Intel did was program the MMX CPUs to recognize the 1.5x multiplier setting as 3.5x. That way, any board that supported Pentium MMX CPUs could run a 233MMX simply by setting the multi to 1.5x

While we're at it, AMD did something similar with the K6-2 CPU. They made it so that the 2.0x multi was recognized as 6.0x. That way, if you have an old board that was capable of the proper CPU voltage (usually 2.2v)...you could install a 400MHz K6-2 & run it a 6.0 x 66MHz

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Your CPU most likely 3.5X multipler locked.

What is it's s-Spec and serial...as in SL27H L7263371-0219 for example ?

I agree; computing.net does need an edit button.

hmm, so even if it is MMX, i can't get more than 233? I WANT MORE DARNIT! i heard that someone had overclocked a pentium 2 to around 5 ghz, how do they do that? why can't i do that? sorry I'm such a noob, thanks for your help jam!

OK, I'll let jam respond.

I agree; computing.net does need an edit button.

"heard that someone had overclocked a pentium 2 to around 5 ghz, how do they do that?"

They didn't...you heard wrong.

"I WANT MORE DARNIT!"

If you want more, consider purchasing a whole new computer. A Sempron64, motherboard, hard drive, and 512mb of RAM can be done for around $300 and will totally blow the doors off that old Pentium...no matter how high you overclock it.

FX-57 @ 3.1ghz
4GB of OCZ PC-4200
500GBx4 drive array
Sapphire X850 XT-PE
Fujitsu 1920x1080 projector

Dude, just get a new pc. The pc is soo old that it can't even run Windows XP correctly. And when you have a pc that can't even run a 4 year old OS like XP then you know it's out of date big time. Can you even run an IM program with that thing?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 6800GT
SATA II 250gig 7200rpm 8mb cache
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

http://news.softpedia.com/news/7GHz-Pentium-6202.shtml

ok,ok, so it was a pentium 4, so sue me, anywhay, i don't want to spend 300$ on a new PC just to overclock it, i have a dell with a pentium 4 that runs fine at 3.2 Ghz standard, i don't need or want to overclock that PC. I want to overclock this old gateway just for the hell of it and to see how high I could overclock it, but just tell me if 233 is the highest i can get because of my motherboard. Also please tell me if there is any software that i can use to overclock higher through window.

google for "pentium overclocked" or "overclocked pentium" their are lots of people who have gone to 5 Ghz or higher with pentium 4's and people who have gone pretty damn far with older chips too.

Yeah there was a guy in Wisconsin that got his P overclocked to 5.03 gig, and could even run a PCI-E graphics adapter is the old AGP slot by using some device to extend the slot. He was famous all over the Northwest for playing Doom3 on it. This was about 3 months ago, so just google for it. A real bright teenager and I think his name was Smith. Let us know.

Have you even got it to run at 233MHz yet? If it's not an MMX, 200MHz is probably the best you're gonna do. You can always try overclocking software, but I wouldn't expect too much.

Here, I dug these 2 out of the archives:

http://www.hwupgrade.com/overclock/cpu/index7.html

http://www.hwupgrade.com/overclock/cpu/index8.html

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