|
Sunday, June 10, 2007 09:22 PM
P-III
550e Coppermine
Romping
Stomping fun on a ABIT BH-6 revision 1.01
Or
how I got some of that over-clocking love…682mhz hehe.
Introduction
The
question before every hardcore gamer is how to upgrade for the most effect
with the least amount of disturbance to either limited bank account reserves
or in some cases marriages hehe. It’s a question that all hardcore gamers
are constantly considering. I have found that I am either working on putting
together some upgrade or conniving with my wife for some future upgrade.
After all if 100 frames a second is good….isn’t 120 frames a second lots
better <VBG>…? This article deals with my decision process,
the actual upgrade and some of the benchmarks after the upgrade.
Decisions
Decisions
Anyways
getting the most bang for the buck is never a simple question, especially if
you are attempting an elegant solution, rather than the throw money at it
trick. Its more fun to buy as cheaply as possible and by spending lots of
time at www.killerapp.com and www.pricewatch.com
its now possible to put together the killer machine for a song. But before
you get to that stage you have to know what to get. Research is the key.
From
the days of my putting together the Falcon 4
benchmark I knew that Flight Sims demand above all a fast CPU. I wanted
to buy something that could be overclocked since I knew that I needed at
least speeds over 600mhz to really justify getting rid of my Celeron 366
oc’d to 458. I also knew that convincing my wife to let me spend over 600
dollars on a 700mhz was completely out of the question.
So
then it was just a matter of finding articles dealing with Intel’s newest
cash cow the Coppermine processor. From articles on www.anandtech.com
and www.overclockers.com I came
to discover that the PIII 500e and PIII 550e Flip Chip Socket Processors
might just be the answer I was looking for. They seemed to be imminently
overclockable, with some reports of PIII-550e going to 825mhz, and for a
given clock speed right there with the Athlon in terms of power.
From what I gathered the price performance potential was right where
I needed to be. The question arose of why chose the Flip Chip Socket. Well
as far as I can tell it’s the only way to purchase the P-III 500e or P-III
550e Coppermines, besides there being some reports of that form factor being
easier to overclock. (I believe it has something to do with the lower
voltage of the Flip Chip)
The
Intel P-III 550e has 256k of on die cache running at processor speed. It’s
also using the new .18-micron chip, which makes for a much cooler running
chip and for veteran overclockers you know cool is good. This was looking
good. Then the bad news…almost every place I went specifically warned
about trying to use the PIII 550e with certain motherboards and my Abit BH-6
rev. 1.01 was on that list. This was a problem since the motherboard
situation is so cloudy right now. I was planning on keeping my Abit until
the situation became clearer and some good choices in motherboards came up.
This was looking to be impossible and now I started to do a lot of research
into what motherboards might be a good solution to the problem if I
couldn’t use my Abit BH-6 as a stop-gap.
The
problem was a simple one. To get the fastest speeds out of the P-IIIe you
had to overclock the Front Side bus, reports of overclocks to 150mhz with
speeds of 825mhz were being reported already. The big problem is when you
overclock the bus, the BX chipset has problems in providing the correct
divisor to the PCI bus and the AGP bus. Now the newer revisions of the BX
like the Abit BE-6-II and Soyo’s 6BA+IV provided for a PCI divisor of /4
instead of the older /3. Doing some math you can see that even if you are
clocking the bus to 150mhz if you can divide the speed by /4 you get a speed
of 37.5 which will usually work. Understand though that there are a few
hardrives that don’t even like that limited overclock so your results may
vary.
With
my old setup of a Celeron 366 running at 83x5.5 I had problems because of
the 41.5 mhz (PCI /2) of my PCI bus. My IBM Deskstar and Quantum Fireball
really didn’t agree with that amount of overclock meaning that the only
way to get them stable was to not turn DMA on in Win 98se. Not a big loss
from some game benchmarks but I still didn’t like the idea.
But
a bigger problem considering my desire to get a AGP card was the limitation
of the BX chipset in regard to the AGP bus being set to either 1/1 or 2/3 of
the FSB speed. This means that at 150mhz the AGP bus would be cranking along
at near 100mhz…way out of the spec 66mhz. Not many cards like that kind of
action. Though there are reports that disabling side banding and/or setting
the AGP multiplier to 1x working. I didn’t want to spend money on
maybe’s…so the search continued.
I
researched the 810 Intel Chipset which was designed for the Flip Chip
Processor Socket but the thought of using a integrated Intel 752 Graphic
Chipset was just way too scugly to bear. Then I researched the various 820
solutions, but they either required you to use the vastly overpriced for the
performance RAMBUS Ram or they used the vastly slow Memory Hub Translator to
translate the SDRAM signal to something the native RAMBUS 820 chipset could
use. Both extremely poor solutions given the performance of the BX chipsets
against even a RAMBUS equipped 820. The performance just isn’t there in my
opinion to justify the cost. Thanks but no thanks…
Next
came VIA motherboards, specifically the Apollo Pro 133 chipset. This may
turn out to be the way I go. I like several options of the VIA chipset
specifically the ability to run PC-100 memory at spec speeds while the CPU
runs at 150mhz. This would be a big money saver for me (it means in short
you can run your PC-100 Memory at spec while the CPU runs at 150mhz) and
would allow me to wait until the VIA sponsored memory solutions become
available. Also the VIA chipset
allows the PCI and AGP bus speeds to be set at or near spec no matter what
FSB is selected, this is a huge plus. The
big minus is the penalty in sheer speed compared to the BX chipsets. I
really have to do a lot more research into VIA chipsets before I decide to
spend my money.
Just
when it seemed that I might not be able to get any good solutions a terrific
compromise came up. I discovered that ABIT had come up with a new BIOS that
allowed me to use the P-III 550e….WOOOO HOOO.
Take a look at this site http://www.overclock.com/index.htm
this and the new NV bios from ABIT saved the day.
So
then I ordered my retail version from Malay P-III 550e from www.buycomp.com
I couldn't fine any of the Slocket II connectors. That’s when snag number
two hit. The entire first run of the Iwill and MSI slockets had been sold
out. Ouch. I was frantic and started haunting all the forums and lo and
behold on the www.overclockers.com
forum I got a lead. www.computernerd.com
had some MSI 6905 master Slockets, I immediately called them since it
wasn’t listed on the website. He
had several and was surprised I sounded so relived…hehe.
Now
what is a Slocket Adapter? Well you see since Intel basically completely
dropped the ball on the release of the 810 and 820 chipsets there was
absolutely no reason to buy a Flip Chip Socket Motherboard….or you could
buy one if you wanted to use the integrated Intel 752 Graphic chip. Oooh
noooo Mr. Bill not that slow piece of dung. Seeing this vacuum several
manufactures stepped in and produced adapters styled after 370 to slot 1
adapter but with the required voltage modifications. This allowed the use of
the Flip Chip Sockets on the older but still extremely fast BX chipsets.
It’s such a prevalent solution that even Intel gives limited instructions
on their use inside the box for the Processor. A telling indication of the
dominance of the BX chipset over the existing 810 and 820 solutions, even in
the face of the compromises of the PCI and AGP divisor situation.
How
I went about it...
The
nitty gritty details of the conversion were probably the easiest part of the
entire upgrade. With only two absolutely essential operations required
besides the physical swap. You must upgrade the BIOS of the ABIT BH-6
revision 1.01 to the NV bios. Please read carefully the instructions on the
ABIT site in regards to updating the BIOS. The tales of woe that follow the
unwary and unwilling when updating BIOS are legendary. You can kill your
motherboard dead if you do it incorrectly.
On the other hand armed with just a minimum experience and a careful
reading and following of the instructions on the ABIT site I have updated my
bios 4 times without incident. It can be done but not by anyone who believes
directions are for fools. Be aware that if you kill your motherboard thru
the folly of not reading and following directions all you will get is tsk
tsk from most.
The
second important item and this is also crucial if reports are true on the
net. You must adjust the Voltage settings on the MSI Slocket to 1.60, DO NOT
ALLOW AUTO OPERATION. This is my unsolicited advice to you. The instructions
are extremely vague about the settings and I sat there for a bit wondering
about whether to leave it on auto or not. Then it occurred to me, when had I
ever witnessed auto anything actually working on a computer…<VBG>.
So I set the voltage settings and I advise you to as well. About the Iwill
slocket II I don’t know the exact settings not having that slocket to
test…but if I were to bet I would be to set it to manual settings. Also on
the MSI Slocket there is a jumper labeled J3 that is misleading. You must
set that to Coppermine, as its related to not only SMP but apparently to
Coppermine operation as well.
Click
for larger image.
Once
I had all the jumpers and the bios set I buttoned the case up and pressed
power, hoping that those articles I read were correct. The next moment I was
greeted by the start up screen. I went into the bios to check for the
correct Voltage settings and the bios was already showing 1.60 I reset all
the settings inside the Abit CPU softmenu. These are the settings I used
initially.
CPU
operating Speed: User Define
Turbo Frequency: disabled
External Clock (PCI): 100mhz
Multiplier Factor: x5.5
SEL100/66# Signal: Low
AGP/CPUCLK: 2/3
L2 Cache Latency: Default
Speed Error Hold: Disabled
CPU
Power Supply: User Define
Core voltage: 1.60
I
then saved the selected save settings and exit and my new P-III 550e
rebooted. Next up was
benchmarking my beast since apparently it was going to work…<VBG>.
For this I selected the games I run. Though it must be admitted that never
did find an acceptable Unreal Tournament dem file and if anyone has one that
runs please email me with a link. Nearly every other game I run is here
along with comparisons between my old Celeron 458 and the new chip running
at speeds of 550 and the current overclocked speed of 682, which I achieved
by setting my Ext. Clock (PCI) in the bios to124mhz.
On
to part 2 Benchmarking the BEAST
|
