Okay... its time for an update. Things are coming together pretty well. Starting from where I left off... I was running at 1.5ghz with my 130 bus speed and 12x multi. I had been running 3 sticks of ram, 1x Patriot 512 and 2x Kingston Valueram. It dawned on me that I had never taken out the Kingstons since I had them first. So I did that and just left the PDP stick in there. I had been running it at 1.475 volts... and at one point I notched the northbridge up. I moved the core up the next step and sure enough it worked. Next I wanted to try I higher multiplier... couldn't get to work. Even at 1.65v... still wasn't stable. I wasn't too upset though... I ran sandra and 3Dmark and saw an improvement. I still wondered what was holding it back. If I couldn't get it to work at 12.5 then there is no point in wiring the socket for 14x. Keep reading if want a good laugh.
Now.. about a week before I did this I realized my power supply only rated at 200 watts. I had borrowed it from a Dimension 2350 that I'm not using for anything, just never bothered to see what it was rated at. Seriously, I had even ran 9800xt in there and it hadn't given me problems... at least not one that I didn't chalk up to being part of my other issues. I'm actually kinda bad in this department... my main computer is an HP Pavilion that I upgraded form a P4 Williamate 1.8ghz to a 2.6ghz Northwood, and stuck a EVGA 7600gt in it. It has ran for almost 2 years this way... and it had the stock 230w supply in it. So I ended up getting a new one off eBay. I got a 400w Coolmax that is really nice.. It has a 120mm fan with a speed switch, nice long power leads. Put it in, and sure enough it stabled right up. I also discovered that if I set the multiplier to 13 in the bios it would run at 12.5. I thought that was weird... but I'm stable at 1666mhz. Actually it is at 1670mhz.. the spread spectrum makes the FSB 133.7... at least this is what is indicated by CPU-Z.
So the other issue I had to deal with was my graphics card. I had been running an old radeon 7000 in there, but I wanted some more juice to play my Civ4 with. I had been tossing between a fx5950 and a 9800xt. I found a 9800xt with a zalman cooler so I jumped on it. When I got home and pluged it in it was all scrambled. It would post.. but then the screen was all scrambled. I took it out and inspected it and found that it had a loose capacitor on it. One of the leads was broken and not making contact. Next I took some box tape to sinch it down and I got it working. Did a full run of benchmarks and it was great. I turned it off and when I came back it was all glitched again. I fiddled with it again and managed break it off. I tried to superglue it but that didn't work reliably. I didn't try to solder it because there are other SMDs on the back of the PCB. Well after I got the new power supply I took a binder clip, some pieces of paper (on the back as an insulator and as a shim on the front), and a random plastic piece that came out of some vertical blinds. I put it all together and volia!! it worked. Going from the 7000 to the 9800xt increased my 3Dmark scores by 350%. I think Civ4 runs just as good if not better than my P4. I'm still sorting out the optimal settings in the BIOS... I should retest the 2 sticks I pulled out, but i'm mondo stoked.
"Retro Rocket"
Athlon XP-M 2200+ // Epox 8KTA3
Radeon 9800xt // Voodoo2 SLI
Diamond MX300 // SB AWE64 Gold