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| Page 6 of 8 |
Dynamic Duo: FreeSpeed Pro + Athlon/KA7 combo
As in most Athlon overclocking kits, the FreeSpeed Pro by NinjaMicro offers both multiplier and voltage selections via several DIP switches onboard. Now we shall witness how it complements an Athlon 650MHz + ABIT KA7 setup…
Now, if only I could get hold of other overclocking kits to compare this with…
To mount the FreeSpeed Pro on the top-left “fingers” of the Athlon, you’ll have to strip part of the Athlon’s casing as illustrated:
It took me 15 grueling minutes to “undress” just one side of her!! And of course, there were loads of scratch marks…
What can I say?? It ain’t pretty but you’ll appreciate its results…
Firstly, I should suggest you download the latest RK BIOS to test this with. Although I can’t explain it, the older RJ BIOS simply disallows me booting with a multiplier setting above 7.0 on the FreeSpeed Pro. Only after I flashed the BIOS with RK, this threshold was subsequently lifted. Additionally, the old BIOS requires frequent resets (after tweaking FSBs) before it would boot up properly.
I typically changed multipliers on the FreeSpeed Pro, but left all voltage adjustments to the ABIT BIOS (verified with VIA’s HW Monitoring prog). Note that by adding the FreeSpeed Pro, the ABIT BIOS seemed to detect this and voltage range was extended to 1.90V max! This allowed me to stabilize the system at 1MHz higher (i.e. 117MHz FSB at 1.85V).
After progressive tweaking, I managed an optimal setting of 824MHz (8.0 x 103MHz & PCI Clk of 34MHz) with Host + PCI Clk enabled (i.e. memory timing = 137MHz)! Meaning I didn’t have to sacrifice too much memory bandwidth to achieve the highest CPU clock rate! Also, this indicates that my 0.18 micron 650MHz Athlon has well about attained its core limit at 824MHz.
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