winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 17:17:

Ive heard many good things about older models of the intel celeron specifically slot 1 models being crazy overclockers. I have experience with socket 775 celerons (celeron D and other models god forbid) but ive never touched a celeron older than 2004. do pre 2004 celerons have potential for retro gaming/overclocking and if so, should i keep my eye out for one?

side question: did you ever own a celeron in the late 90's and early 2000's and how was it?

I have a celeron mendocino and is AMAZING, overclock from 366 to 466, and stable without fan! just a big heatsink

The only Celeron that I've bothered with is the Tualatin model.

In the Slot 1 days, I chose the SL2W8 Pentium II 300, which is a Deschutes core with the cache chips from the 450 model. So it will often run at least 450 MHz. I ran it at 504 MHz on 112 MHz bus. There is also the Pentium III 450 SL35D which has the cache chips from the Pentium III 600.

After that the popular thing was the Coppermine overclocked to whatever it would run at.

Love my Celeron 300A and Celeron 333 machines for pure DOS.

The interesting thing about these CPUs to me is how, with their integrated L2 cache, Intel no longer needed to use SEPP. Intel could have chosen to use it in Socket 7, but there was no way Intel was going to go back to having a non patented socket that could also house products from competitors, so they came out with Socket 370 instead. No doubt the additional 49 pins also gave Socket 370 additional headroom for future CPUs.

Slot 1 Covingtons are the overclock champions, frequently going well beyond 100MHz FSB. Still no L2, so pretty pointless - a CPU several hundred MHz slower with cache will beat it.

As for Mendocino, it's less form factor than base speed: there was only really one stepping of Mendocino (well, officially one for slot, one for socket, but released at the same time) so a Celeron 300 is essentially identical to a Celeron 533. No Mendocino is going to get far beyond that (although 550MHz is not unheard of). So the lower the multiplier, the more chance you have of clocking highly. Also memory performance scales with bus speed, so a Celeron 333@5x100=500Mhz will be faster than a Celeron 500@7.5x66=500MHz. Most Celeron 300A will OC to 450MHz, a lot of C333A will OC to 500MHz and some (sadly not mine in 1999 :' ( ) C366 will make it to 550MHz. If not, 75MHz or 83MHz FSB frequenly will work (as above, which sounds like 85MHz FSB - and which implies a motherboard with Abit SoftMenu or similar 😉 )

"Legendary Celeron 300A overclocked to 721 MHz with dry ice cooling & 2,7V"

https://muropaketti.com/tietotekniikka/retro- … eron-300alla/5/

Intel always tried to coerse to buy a new system. And those overdrive stuff were a fooling of customers. Thank god for AMD and Cyrix. Both Socket 7 and Socket 370 were 64bit 66mhz at start.

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 17:17:

side question: did you ever own a celeron in the late 90's and early 2000's and how was it?

First PC I built from scratch was a Celery 300A, on an Abit BH6 with 128 meg of PC100 RAM. That is how easy overclocking was for a while, first from-scratch build I aimed for what should be difficult, a 50% overclock. Oh yeah, a marginally bigger heat sink.

It did overheat on the hottest of days, I remember a LAN party I was having to desk-fan-blast into the open case[1]. Had a TNT for graphics, and gained a then "old" voodoo 1 for glide at some point.

It's the 50% overclock that was something that basically has never happened again, I don't think. Not without insane cooling. Or perhaps not taking the budget processor of the time and putting it up with top-tier, the PII 450 IIRC.

I always found the crashiness of Win3 and 9x to be annoying, at least. But my expectations of stability were already set, and my knowledge was low-end: it had to have been, it was the first from-scratch build. So whilst I thought the hardware was stable, because I likely ascribed crashes to Bill Gates[2], the machine might have been a bit flaky.

But what were my peers using? Perhaps some PC world special, Tiny, Time, and the odd Evesham Micro.... 1 in 4 machines was probably OK 😀 All my machine had to do was look better than some Packard Bell stinker packed with adware, so not a high bar.

I do think my C300A at 450 was pretty good, at 464 (103MHzx4.5) I do remember it not quite working at 450 was "stable". I would have bought the cheapest RAM I could find, as long as it was PC100 rated. Nostalgia is a thing though, as is the instability of machines owned by teens/20s amateur computer admins, running win 9x. Was it actually stable? Get the kit and try it!

The Abit boards with CPU soft options were a good choice. I think ASUS might have offered the same kind of thing at the time? I seem to remember Abit being the best choice.... if you need to give the CPU a bit more voltage, that might have been available

[1] Saw a piranha in Digbeth. Yes, those words at face value are what I mean.

[2] I still do that gag, blaming Bill Gates personally, when any computer crashes. It was in South Park the movie, some general blames Bill Gates for a computer crashing, and then because he is a general, can get Bill Gates in the room. And shoots Gates when he starts nasally trotting out an Micros~1 marketingism.

progman.exe wrote on 2024-05-09, 19:49:

First PC I built from scratch was a Celery 300A, on an Abit BH6 with 128 meg of PC100 RAM. That is how easy overclocking was for […]
Show full quote

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 17:17:

side question: did you ever own a celeron in the late 90's and early 2000's and how was it?

First PC I built from scratch was a Celery 300A, on an Abit BH6 with 128 meg of PC100 RAM. That is how easy overclocking was for a while, first from-scratch build I aimed for what should be difficult, a 50% overclock. Oh yeah, a marginally bigger heat sink.

It did overheat on the hottest of days, I remember a LAN party I was having to desk-fan-blast into the open case[1]. Had a TNT for graphics, and gained a then "old" voodoo 1 for glide at some point.

It's the 50% overclock that was something that basically has never happened again, I don't think. Not without insane cooling. Or perhaps not taking the budget processor of the time and putting it up with top-tier, the PII 450 IIRC.

I always found the crashiness of Win3 and 9x to be annoying, at least. But my expectations of stability were already set, and my knowledge was low-end: it had to have been, it was the first from-scratch build. So whilst I thought the hardware was stable, because I likely ascribed crashes to Bill Gates[2], the machine might have been a bit flaky.

But what were my peers using? Perhaps some PC world special, Tiny, Time, and the odd Evesham Micro.... 1 in 4 machines was probably OK 😀 All my machine had to do was look better than some Packard Bell stinker packed with adware, so not a high bar.

I do think my C300A at 450 was pretty good, at 464 (103MHzx4.5) I do remember it not quite working at 450 was "stable". I would have bought the cheapest RAM I could find, as long as it was PC100 rated. Nostalgia is a thing though, as is the instability of machines owned by teens/20s amateur computer admins, running win 9x. Was it actually stable? Get the kit and try it!

The Abit boards with CPU soft options were a good choice. I think ASUS might have offered the same kind of thing at the time? I seem to remember Abit being the best choice.... if you need to give the CPU a bit more voltage, that might have been available

[1] Saw a piranha in Digbeth. Yes, those words at face value are what I mean.

[2] I still do that gag, blaming Bill Gates personally, when any computer crashes. It was in South Park the movie, some general blames Bill Gates for a computer crashing, and then because he is a general, can get Bill Gates in the room. And shoots Gates when he starts nasally trotting out an Micros~1 marketingism.

Wow! people really showed up to LAN event with their parents packard bell OEM home PC? nobody could PAY me to do that. The fact that you were able to get a cpu clocked that high for your first "from scratch" build is truly impressive. I think stability is for sure important but for a LAN event, if the components can hang on for the time being thats all that matters.
do you how if any damage occoured after the overheating happened at the lan party?

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 18:06:

Intel always tried to coerse to buy a new system. And those overdrive stuff were a fooling of customers. Thank god for AMD and Cyrix. Both Socket 7 and Socket 370 were 64bit 66mhz at start.

i never really understood what a "pentium overdrive" was. sounded cool though, i liked the logo design too.
I think "Extreme" series processors such as the core 2 extreme, pentium extreme etc. are abit more legit in terms of their name.

Mandrew wrote on 2024-05-09, 18:05:

"Legendary Celeron 300A overclocked to 721 MHz with dry ice cooling & 2,7V"

https://muropaketti.com/tietotekniikka/retro- … eron-300alla/5/

goodness gracious...

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:13:

Wow! people really showed up to LAN event with their parents packard bell OEM home PC? nobody could PAY me to do that. The fact that you were able to get a cpu clocked that high for your first "from scratch" build is truly impressive. I think stability is for sure important but for a LAN event, if the components can hang on for the time being thats all that matters.
do you how if any damage occoured after the overheating happened at the lan party?

I am exaggerating for comedy effect with the brand names, but someone had to have the worst machine. Was it a PB, maybe not, but it can't be ruled out.

But stick a voodoo2 and some more RAM in a PB, and you could frag probably quite well.

I don't think I saw any signs of damage due to over heating, but that era was what we know now to be the capacitor plague. Lets say I shortened the life of that board, or at least the big caps.... which would have died anyway, even if the machine had always run stock.

The mobo had a little heat sensor under the CPU, and the PC speaker would beep based on a BIOS setting. I was getting annoying beeping, not lock-ups, that made me use the desk-fan-cooling-solution.

The LAN I was thinking of was gamers (not a word at the time) of the dial-up era, using the offices of a small factory in Birmingham, England at the weekend. It was not serious, just a chance to play multiplayer without a ping of 300ms or so. I was working by that time, and one guy at work coined the phrase "geek Olympics", but then came along to the next one!

My memories of LANs are that there always seemed to be one person with massive technical problems, and a panic Windows reinstall was the game they play for a bit... 😀

edit: It was slot 1, the thermometer poking up must have been another machine. Did the 300A have a built-in thermometer? Maybe it was locking up.... a long time ago, that LAN was originally arranged on usenet

progman.exe wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:25:

I am exaggerating for comedy effect with the brand names, but someone had to have the worst machine. Was it a PB, maybe not, but […]
Show full quote

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:13:

Wow! people really showed up to LAN event with their parents packard bell OEM home PC? nobody could PAY me to do that. The fact that you were able to get a cpu clocked that high for your first "from scratch" build is truly impressive. I think stability is for sure important but for a LAN event, if the components can hang on for the time being thats all that matters.
do you how if any damage occoured after the overheating happened at the lan party?

I am exaggerating for comedy effect with the brand names, but someone had to have the worst machine. Was it a PB, maybe not, but it can't be ruled out.

But stick a voodoo2 and some more RAM in a PB, and you could frag probably quite well.

I don't think I saw any signs of damage due to over heating, but that era was what we know now to be the capacitor plague. Lets say I shortened the life of that board, or at least the big caps.... which would have died anyway, even if the machine had always run stock.

The mobo had a little heat sensor under the CPU, and the PC speaker would beep based on a BIOS setting. I was getting annoying beeping, not lock-ups, that made me use the desk-fan-cooling-solution.

The LAN I was thinking of was gamers (not a word at the time) of the dial-up era, using the offices of a small factory in Birmingham, England at the weekend. It was not serious, just a chance to play multiplayer without a ping of 300ms or so. I was working by that time, and one guy at work coined the phrase "geek Olympics", but then came along to the next one!

My memories of LANs are that there always seemed to be one person with massive technical problems, and a panic Windows reinstall was the game they play for a bit... 😀

i am in my final year of highschool and i will host the odd lan event at my house with some friends typically windows XP builds and something similar always happens when a pc will require a brand new installation of either device drivers or windows. one of the worst feelings.

PacardBell or not. Everybody had beige boxes with somekind of cpu/ram/hdd/fdd/cd back then. The 3D accelerator defined the "gaming pc".

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:36:

PacardBell or not. Everybody had beige boxes with somekind of cpu/ram/hdd/fdd/cd back then. The 3D accelerator defined the "gaming pc".

true enough. i suppose other parts aside from maybe the CPU such as the mobo, hard disk, ram and maybe the sound card weren't at the time advanced to the point of being sold as "gaming"parts or parts for "gaming"

Hey in the ISA era most of us had somekind of cheap clone sound. Or a Vibra16. In post ISA era most had integrated sound. In pre 3D most had just a VLB/PCI dumb framebuffer. Lucky ones had a S3 Trio or Cirrus CL-GD. Unlucy ones had somethin bizare or little incompatible or slow in some modes. Post 3D every "real gamer" had a Voodoo. But after Riva TNT wiped all up. And rest is history.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:47:

Hey in the ISA era most of us had somekind of cheap clone sound. Or a Vibra16. In post ISA era most had integrated sound. In pre 3D most had just a VLB/PCI dumb framebuffer. Lucky ones had a S3 Trio or Cirrus CL-GD. Unlucy ones had somethin bizare or little incompatible or slow in some modes. Post 3D every "real gamer" had a Voodoo. But after Riva TNT wiped all up. And rest is history.

yeah the way i understand it, you were lucky if you had a s3 trio or something of that sort 93-95, 3dfx voodoo graphics then came along and blew everything out of the water in 96-97 but not too long after, nvidia came in the later half of the 90's 98-99, and the wiped slate clean with their riva tnt and tnt2 cards.

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:39:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:36:

PacardBell or not. Everybody had beige boxes with somekind of cpu/ram/hdd/fdd/cd back then. The 3D accelerator defined the "gaming pc".

true enough. i suppose other parts aside from maybe the CPU such as the mobo, hard disk, ram and maybe the sound card weren't at the time advanced to the point of being sold as "gaming"parts or parts for "gaming"

I think it was simpler than that: the typical PC gamer was... young. Where are teenagers going to get the money for "gaming" components?

There's a reason that all the multimedia kits (CD-ROM + sound card + bigish software bundle) sold in the early 1990s were labelled as for multimedia, CD-ROM encyclopedias, other CD-ROM reference software, etc. That is how you got parents to open their wallets - by telling them that if they bought this thing, they wouldn't need to run off to the library to consult 30+ volume paper encyclopedias. And... sure, a lot of those CD-ROM drives and SB16s probably... ended up being used for games, but that's not how they got into homes.

The reason that there's a vibrant market of 'gaming'-flavoured peripherals today is because, well, it's the same people who were teens in the 90s buying them and those folks have money to spend on this hobby. If there are any surviving brick and mortar computer stores in your area, look at the demographics of the people shopping there - you'll see a lot more young dads (i.e. dads who are clearly shopping for themselves rather than the toddler/elementary school-age kid they are with) than teenagers.

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-09, 21:12:

I think it was simpler than that: the typical PC gamer was... young. Where are teenagers going to get the money for "gaming" com […]
Show full quote

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:39:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-05-09, 20:36:

PacardBell or not. Everybody had beige boxes with somekind of cpu/ram/hdd/fdd/cd back then. The 3D accelerator defined the "gaming pc".

true enough. i suppose other parts aside from maybe the CPU such as the mobo, hard disk, ram and maybe the sound card weren't at the time advanced to the point of being sold as "gaming"parts or parts for "gaming"

I think it was simpler than that: the typical PC gamer was... young. Where are teenagers going to get the money for "gaming" components?

There's a reason that all the multimedia kits (CD-ROM + sound card + bigish software bundle) sold in the early 1990s were labelled as for multimedia, CD-ROM encyclopedias, other CD-ROM reference software, etc. That is how you got parents to open their wallets - by telling them that if they bought this thing, they wouldn't need to run off to the library to consult 30+ volume paper encyclopedias. And... sure, a lot of those CD-ROM drives and SB16s probably... ended up being used for games, but that's not how they got into homes.

The reason that there's a vibrant market of 'gaming'-flavoured peripherals today is because, well, it's the same people who were teens in the 90s buying them and those folks have money to spend on this hobby. If there are any surviving brick and mortar computer stores in your area, look at the demographics of the people shopping there - you'll see a lot more young dads (i.e. dads who are clearly shopping for themselves rather than the toddler/elementary school-age kid they are with) than teenagers.

to be a well off adult/computer gamer in the 90's would have been an awesome time to be one. i have friends who were pc "gamers" who were also adults during this time. this is how i got my voodoo 1 (which now doesnt work unfortunately) for free.