RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-27, 15:47:
Sphere478 wrote on 2022-04-27, 10:07:
At this point, these are purely a collectors item given the 570 2+ chips that are cheap, plentiful an unlockable.
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
Even before the mod was discovered, the 550ACR was a collectors item only.
My 400ATZ (low voltage) can be overclocked to 550MHz if I increase the voltage from 1.6V to 1.7V.
Basically this. A lot of the times overclocking can get you to the effective limit of the last processor stepping of the architecture.
With locked multipliers its more pronounced because additional FSB gains additional speed.
Like with PII based Mendocino Celerons, the best one you can get is.. a 366MHz model. Almost all of them overclock to 100MHz FSB, and at 5.5x100=550MHz thats pretty much the fastest a Celeron 1 can get. While 6x100 400->600MHz and 5.5x112 may be possible, 600 is pretty much the ceiling of that lot, and much less obtainable.
You can get a 8x66=533MHz Celeron out of the box but whats the point?
So people cant get a 1400MHz P3-S Tualatin for their retro needs? Whell then let them eat 1100MHz TuaCeleron, and just overclock it to 11x133=1466MHz enjoying the very highest end of Talatin performance. Its less trivial than with the 366 parts because not all of them have 33% tuning potential, but still doable.
Highest end Socket A is the same, Barton cores cap out at around 2300MHz something with air cooling, so a rare-ish 11x200=2200MHz Athlon XP 3200+ doesnt really have much tuning potential. That cant be said about the 11x166=1833MHz 2500+ models tho, which can mostly be overclocked to 200MHz FSB without a problem making them 3200+ processors with a few mouse clicks. 11.5x166 2600+ is bit more problematic because thats hitting the limit, but its possible with a good model in a good board. Some people said that the actual limit is around 2400-2500MHz-ish, but im fairly sure thats late stepping XP-M + unlocked multiplier + great motherboard + 500+MHz (A-DATA Vitesta) memory + overblown cooling type crazyness.
The common plebs at the time had 2500->3200+ mods everywhere, even with shitty parts, and they were thankful for it.
With Socket 7 systems your practically not even overclocking. Since even late motherboards need jumpers or DIP switches to set the multiplier, FSB, and core voltage, the board doesnt even know what the rated speed was in the first place. So paying top dollars for an 550MHz part instead of getting a mobile version far cheaper is just pure dick swinging and feeding the OCD monster.
I wish this could be done so easily to Slot A Athlon parts, but those are pretty crappy overclockers, with or without a goldfinger device.
the loyal slave learns to love the lash