13.1 Can you get a chip faster than 180 mhz, and what is overclocking?
From FlightSim
Q:
I REALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND THE BOARD SPEED STUFF, BUT CAN I ASSUME THAT YOU THINK I SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET A CHIP FASTER THAN 180 MHZ? ALSO, I READ AN ARTICLE ON THE PROS AND CONS OF OVERCLOCKING, BUT I DIDN'T TELL HOW TO OVERCLOCK. I DO KNOW THOUGH THAT ONE TIME I INSTALLED A GAME PRODUCED BY SIERRA AND IT LISTED MY PROCESSOR AS A 166 IN THE SET-UP TEST.
A:
All (modern) motherboards can create a clock frequency by setting a bunch of jumpers. For a Pentium motherboard that is 50 MHz (P75), 60 MHz (P90, P120, P150, P180) and 66 MHz (P100, P133, P166, P200, P233). Many (but not all) motherboards also have 75 MHz and 83 MHz settings (sometimes undocumented). When the fellow who assembles the PC adds the CPU he sets the jumpers according to the CPU it will hold. I don't know of any Pentium motherboards that don't support 66 MHz. I can almost guarantee that your motherboard supports 66 MHz. As you might notice, the clock speeds of the CPU's are all multiplications of the base frequency: a P150 is 60 MHz x 2.5. Another set of jumpers on the motherboard regulates this multiplier. This way one motherboard can hold any speed CPU. However, some CPU's are locked off against using a multiplier it isn't supposed to be able to do. This is especially true with P133's: there are p133 CPU's which will only do a multiplier of 2. Regardless of what the jumpers are set to. Overclocking a CPU is "simply" to set the jumpers for a different speed of CPU. In your case if you would want to overclock your P150 to 166 MHz you would change the jumpers for "60 MHz" to "66 MHz". 66 x 2.5 = 166. As far as I know there are two varieties Pentium motherboard: Socket 5's and socket 7's. The socket 5's go up to 166 Mhz, the socket 7's to 200 or 233. That "socket x" should be written on the CPU socket.
So it is true that the upgrade for your CPU is 180 MHz. However that assumes no changes to the motherboard clock speed, which involves moving one or two jumpers. I can't tell you which ones, since that is different for every motherboard. It should definitely say so in the manual of your motherboard. If your motherboard can handle 180, it can also deal with 200: 60 MHz x 3 = 180, 66 MHz x 3 = 200 (well, .. 199).
Christine Derksen
