Overclocking Dual boards

[Guest]

Hi guys. I'm just probing out there.
Has anyone ever heard of overcloking a dual motherboard?
Is the frequence multiplier set for each processor, or for both of them? I'd like to have some infos on that.
Thanks!

 

[Magus]

I'v heard of dual cele 366s clocking at 550 on an Abit BP6(i think that's the board).
Also I've heard of dual p3 700s clocking into the 900s.

 

[Guest]

I have a EPoX KP6-BS (dual Slot 1 - BX chipset) mainboard. Its very good and CHEAP! 4 Dimm slots for sdram, 5 pci, agp 2x (all BX only do AGP 2x afaik) and 3 ISA. It cost me about 18 months ago, AU$275. The reason i bought it was because it is one of the only mainboards that was slot one and thus p3 (at the time) compatible and is overclockable.

I run two P3 450's in it at 504 (4.5 X 112) because that means that the cache modules are running at their rated speed and less likely to crash (The cache modules on the p3's i have got are 250 modules, not the 225 that you would expect).

This mainboard supports bus speeds of 66, 100, 103, 112, 133. While that doesn't lead to much overclocking as the highest "stable FSB" is 112, due to the PCI divider is locked at 3 when running at 100MHz or above. I've tried running at 133, but it just crashed horribly.

When you overclock a dual processor rig, you set a single multiplier and front side bus speed for both CPU's. It is not possible to run different FSB speeds and different multipliers on x86 technology.

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Ian McGinley
parawolf

 

[Guest]

Ahh. Well that's quite interesting. Now, if AMD could finally distribute their MP chipset. Hehe.

 

[Guest]

>> Dual boards don't require you to have similar
>> processors, so I imagine settings for one processor are
>> independent of the other.

Thats quite incorrect. It is highly recommended that you run cpu's of the same family, model, and finally stepping.

While it is possible to use processors of different stepping, if you have a problem with it, you will find that 99% of people will not support you, espically microsoft help support. Windows NT/2k will complain quite loudly in Event Viewer something like this:

The CPUs in this multiprocessor system are not all the same revision level. To use all processors the operating system restricts itself to the features of the least capable processor in the system. Should problems occur with this system, contact the CPU manufacturer to see if this mix of processors is supported.

And to re-iterate, my personal knowledge about owning a dual processor mainboard, you set the one FSB and one multiplier for BOTH cpus.

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Ian McGinley
parawolf

 

[Guest]

>> Ahh. Well that's quite interesting. Now, if AMD could
>> finally distribute their MP chipset. Hehe.

Whats even more interesting about AMD processors is i'm 95% confident that they are all of the same stepping (WDCPUID or whatever could prove me wrong). Which means that buying one Athlon 800 now, you could be confident that you could buy a second when you could afford it at a lower price say 4 months later and get SMP power. Unlike with INTEL processors you can buy two on the same day from the same retailler and not be 100% confident that they are of the same stepping.

Oh, i just remembered... SMP = Symmetric Multi Processing. Symmetric means the same. Thus processors should be of the same stepping, same frequency etc... when used together.

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Ian McGinley
parawolf

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by parawolf on 11/11/00 10:27 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Really? I thought that SMP meant that both processors can be used to perform identical tasks, which differs from non-symmetric systems where each processor is used for a pre-defined specific task.

 

[Mordy]

Tom overclocked dual Celeron - look in CPU guide