GPL Hardware Questions

I would like some feedback on my proposed setup for GPL. In advance I appreciate all the responses. Abit BH6 Motherboard Generic 128MB PC 100 SDRAM PII 233 Mhz Processor(It is a freebie from a friend) Diamond Stealth II S 220 I am confident the motherboard and RAM are fine but my main questions are will the processor be fine if it is overclocked? If I overclock what speed do you recommend? What cooling solution would you recommend? If I overclock the Stealth what frequency would you recommend? What cooling solutions would you recommend? I have seen some of the 3Dfxcool fans and they look pretty good. I am hoping that I can get at least 30 FPS with this setup. Greg Alexander

somewhere around 300 mhz is good, get a big fan and o/c your video card too.

I would make two suggestions: 1. Use an 8 mb Hercules Thriller instead of the Stealth II. The extra memory in the Thriller makes a *big* difference in frame rate in GPL. 2. Consider a Celeron instead of the PII-233, if/when you can afford it. Celerons are reputed to be much more tolerant of overclocking than standard PII's. Alison On Sat, 03 Oct 1998 16:04:13 GMT, "Greg Alexander"

Quoted text (19 lines)

>I would like some feedback on my proposed setup for GPL. In advance I >appreciate all the responses. >Abit BH6 Motherboard >Generic 128MB PC 100 SDRAM >PII 233 Mhz Processor(It is a freebie from a friend) >Diamond Stealth II S 220 >I am confident the motherboard and RAM are fine but my main questions are >will the processor be fine if it is overclocked? If I overclock what speed >do you recommend? What cooling solution would you recommend? >If I overclock the Stealth what frequency would you recommend? What cooling >solutions would you recommend? I have seen some of the 3Dfxcool fans and >they look pretty good. >I am hoping that I can get at least 30 FPS with this setup. >Greg Alexander

Alison Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. http://www.nh,ultranet.com/~alison

Don't get generic SDRAM if you're trying to overclock. Do yourself a favor and get some good quality name brand CAS2 PC100 SDRAM. - Eric

Quoted text (8 lines)

> I would make two suggestions: > 1. Use an 8 mb Hercules Thriller instead of the Stealth II. The extra > memory in the Thriller makes a *big* difference in frame rate in GPL. > 2. Consider a Celeron instead of the PII-233, if/when you can afford it. > Celerons are reputed to be much more tolerant of overclocking than > standard PII's.

Make that a Celery "A". There is a significant improvement at the same clock speed between a celery without L2 and the "A" with it's 128k on die (and at full cpu speed) L2 cache. Also, the "A" is fully tested and proven at 450mhz, whereas the std Celery seems to be limited to about 400mhz. -- Byron Forbes Captain of Team Lightning Bolt http://members.tripod.com/~HOSHUMUNGUS and http://www.frontiernet.net/~godsoe/bolt/home.htm

Quoted text (12 lines)

>> I would make two suggestions: >> 1. Use an 8 mb Hercules Thriller instead of the Stealth II. The extra >> memory in the Thriller makes a *big* difference in frame rate in GPL. >> 2. Consider a Celeron instead of the PII-233, if/when you can afford it. >> Celerons are reputed to be much more tolerant of overclocking than >> standard PII's. > Make that a Celery "A". There is a significant improvement at the same clock speed > between a celery without L2 and the "A" with it's 128k on die (and at full cpu > speed) L2 cache.

I agree in principle, but just to make sure that a potential buyer doesn't get confused: Celeron 300 no L2 cache Celeron 300A 128k L2 cache Celeron 333 128k L2 cache The 333MHz chip doesn't have the "A" in the name, and yet has the L2 cache. The chip to buy for overclocking purposes would be the 300A, anyway, not the 333, since the 333 would have to run at 500MHz with a 100MHz front side bus. What do you mean by "fully tested"? From the reports I read, it seems to work great at 450MHz, usually, but I'm still not convinced that overclocking a chip at a rate of 50% will be good for it in the long run (by long, I mean "more than 6 months"). I'm not so much concerned about the CPU - the Mendocino is one of the latest designs and Intel, like them or not, have a pretty good and consistent quality in their fabs - but 450MHz is *a lot* of speed for a L2 cache. -- Wolfgang Preiss \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.

Quoted text (10 lines)

> > Also, the "A" is fully tested and proven at 450mhz, whereas the std Celery > > seems to be limited to about 400mhz. > What do you mean by "fully tested"? From the reports I read, it seems > to work great at 450MHz, usually, but I'm still not convinced that > overclocking a chip at a rate of 50% will be good for it in the long > run (by long, I mean "more than 6 months"). I'm not so much concerned > about the CPU - the Mendocino is one of the latest designs and Intel, > like them or not, have a pretty good and consistent quality in their > fabs - but 450MHz is *a lot* of speed for a L2 cache.

I am going by all the "no problem" reports I have gotten. Basically, the core is the same as a 450 (from my memory?) and the most limiting factor with most OCing is L2 cache, the type that is not "on dye" (PIIs) as it is with the 300A/333. It is early days of course and we shall just have to wait and see if this on dye cache has a decent life span at 450 mhz. All looks good so far :) -- Byron Forbes Captain of Team Lightning Bolt http://members.tripod.com/~HOSHUMUNGUS and http://www.frontiernet.net/~godsoe/bolt/home.htm

Besides, if it dies in 6 - 9 months, a replacement CPU will probably be under $100. Marc > I am going by all the "no problem" reports I have gotten. Basically, the core is the >same as a 450 (from my memory?) and the most limiting factor with most OCing is L2 cache, >the type that is not "on dye" (PIIs) as it is with the 300A/333. It is early days of >course and we shall just have to wait and see if this on dye cache has a decent life span

Quoted text (11 lines)

>at 450 mhz. All looks good so far :) >-- > Byron Forbes > Captain of Team Lightning Bolt > http://members.tripod.com/~HOSHUMUNGUS > and > http://www.frontiernet.net/~godsoe/bolt/home.htm