Crow's Tbird

I did it, I broke down and got some parts together to make a better box. I've been using a 266 PentiumII since, hmmm, about 3 or 4 years, time flies, can't keep track. Whatever...it was time to upgrade. After many hours of reading reviews, and comparison shopping at PriceWatch, I figured out what needed upgrading. Um, only everything but the monitor.
It took about 3 hours to put the pieces together and get it up and running [not counting the other 3 hours I spent lapping the bottom of the heatsink flat on a piece of glass with wet or dry. I only went to 600 grit, after reading that a mirror finish actually impedes the cooling process because the ASII doesn't have any 'holes' to fill in.]. Not without interesting turns, as my new hard drive was in my old 266, fully loaded with all my software, drivers, etc. Window$ kept looking for the drivers to make my CD-Rom work, which said drivers were on the CD-Rom, of course. No Access. That took a good half hour to figure out a workaround, but once the new m/b drivers were in, it all went just swell. [Aside from the time I had two mice plugged in at the same time - one PS/2 and one USB. Winders got vewy vewy confused. Don't ask...it was late, ok?]

At first boot, it was detected as a 750MHz cpu. Bummer. I must admit, it took QUITE awhile and QUITE a few tries with BIOS settings to get straight. I finally figured out the new 266MHz FSB chips had to run at 133, doh. [it was late]
Today, after running it at the stock 1GHz settings for a couple of days, I tried messing one more time to get a little oomph out of it. Not that it was slow, just had to see the SiSoft marks be *just that bit faster* than the others. heh. What I figured out: I wasn't paying attention to what the Multiplier was doing as I was changing settings. There were (almost too) MANY choices in the SOFT MenuIII of the Abit. I made a manual note of all the working BIOS settings, (been down the road of ReSet toooooo many times) and tried upping the FSB to 140 with a Multiplier of 7.5, and crossed my fingers, and rebooted....this is normally where I just reach over and hold the power button for as long as it takes to shut down and put the reset jumper on the bios, and start over. It booted right up, and max load seems to be around 51° C. Acceptable, barely. I do use CPU Idle, and that may help. Guess I'll just have to save up for that AYHJA, and from the looks of prices, it won't be long 'til I can afford it. 1Gig AYHJA's are going for around $85 as of this edit.

Benchmark Comparisons of FSB and Multiplier Settings Abit KT7A and AMD Athlon 1GHz / 266 ARGA series
MHz - Multi x FSB	997 - 7.5 x 133	1050 - 7.5 x 140	1090 - 7.5 x 145	1120 - 8 x 140	1125 - 7.5 x 150	1160 - 8 x 145	1190 - 8.5 x 140
CPU ALU	2779	2928	3018	3117	3133	Windows Protection Error	No Boot
CPU FPU	1365	1435	1488	1531	1539

Mem ALU MB/s	532	552	580	568	598
Mem FPU MB/s	618	639	674	646	695

Media MMX it/s	5470	5747	5959	6130	6163
Media 3DNow! it/s	6791	7140	7402	7614	7655

System / CPU Temp C	40 / 45°	45 / 49°	*34 / 37°	*33 / 37°	*34 / 38°

* The Blue Temps were after I'd did the snorkel mod on my HSF and case

The obligatory SiSoft shots.

These are of stock 1000 (7.5 x 133)
Lookin' good on the memory scores, and about average on the CPU scores.
According to MotherBoard Monitor, the system is running around 45° C with
the assistance of CPU Idle. Not too bad.

1000MHz CPU Bench

Memory settings: Single 256mb Micron PC133 CAS2
4-Way Interleaving	Set to Forced and Enabled under both submenus
DRAM Timings:	TURBO
DRAM Latch:	Auto
MD Driving Strength:	HI
Cycle Length:	2
Mem Hole:	Disabled
PCI Master Pipe:	Enabled
P2C/C2P:	Enabled
Fast R-W:	Enabled
AGP Master Write:	Enabled
AGP Master Read:	Enabled

All in all, the upgrade was well worth it. If you're going from say, a 800MHz anything, I doubt you'd see much of a real world difference. I mean, how much faster is half a blink of an eye? But, if you're anywhere below 800MHz, and you have a couple to four hundred bucks, you can build a pretty spiffy unit, just like this.
Updates on how things are going:
9/9/01 -- Looks like we ~~have a winnah~~...actually, not. Got bored, penciled in the L1's and got a little better scores out of it. Oddly enough, it actually runs faster at the stock multiplier of 7.5 x 150fsb @ 1125 than it does at 8 x 140fsb. This particular setup doesn't seem to like a higher multiplier, although the Micron seems to be sustaining the higher fsb at the same peaked settings as the lower speeds. Cool. I'll run it here for awhile and if it isn't good, I'll post it. UPDATE to the UPDATE:9/9/01 -- Looks like the mouse gets confused immensely at 150 MHz and just either hangs or disappears entirely. So, I'll try out the 8 x 140 for awhile. 9/24/01 -- Real World Recap after running for 3 weeks: All programs are opening and executing extremely fast. I know this is a relative term, but I 'time' how long it takes to open Photoshop and Word on others' computers. Mine is the fastest 'on the block' at this point. I'm rather disappointed in the fact that I can't successfully speed the system up. I've tried everything from a 9x multiplier down to 7.5 (stock) with all combinations of fsb speeds from 150MHz down to 100MHz. The only settings that are relatively stable are: 8x140MHz, 7.5x145MHz and all lower fsb settings. Ah well. I'd also slowed the ram settings to compensate for the higher mulitipliers, but to no avail. I've since purchased an new 52x Creative CD-Rom and a US Robotics 56K Performance Pro modem, and now I think it's time to upgrade the TNT vid card to maybe a GeForce2 MX400 -32 meg. I'm not a big gamer, in fact, the only game I had on here was MS Combat Flight Simulator II. Wierd, it worked fine on the PII-266 with the TNT overclocked a bit. However, it won't run without locking up on this setup. I have all the latest video drivers, VIA drivers, etc., too. I'm sure the TNT wil work just fine in the boys' system to replace their SiS 8mb card. It appears that the actual cost of upgrading the original CD-Rom has come to around $560 US. And one more expenditure of around $70 US for the vid card, I have a new hotrod for around $630. I know you can buy complete systems now for that. However, you're surely not going to get an Enlight case, or a 300 watt p/s, or an Abit KT7A mb, or anything else I have. I think it would go for around twice what I have in it if I were to buy it custom confiigured somwhere. Not to mention the fact, it was and is a nice feeling to bring something to 'life' from a pile of parts....plus the challenge of working out the kinks along the way. 10/10/01 -- Update: Still not satisfied with not being able to O/C the ARGA, I tried 7.5 x 150 (1125MHz) again, and realized that I'd been running my TNT card too 'hot'. I put it back to stock settings, and the lockups seem to have gone away, knock on wood. 12/15/01 -- Took momboard out, and I applied some Electrically Conductive gunk from a Rear Window Defroster Repair Kit to the L1's and slapped it all back together. Going for the gold right off, I tried for 9 x 133. Wouldn't even post. Backed it down to 8.5, and it posted, but Windows2K didn't like it. Looks like my previous suspicions about the ARGA being a lousy overclocker are holding out. Finally settled for 8 x 140 @ 1120MHz. Some of the lockups previously probably weren't related to multi and fsb, as I've since applied the VIA 4in1 4.37a drivers, installed an older version of nVidia's drivers (21.85's), and applied the Unofficial PCI Latency Patch with HUGE success. Haven't locked up since the Latency Patch, so if any of you VIA folks are experiencing that VIA crapola, I'd give it a try. 02/01/02 -- Update: Well, let's see. Lots of water has passed since last year already. I've installed the PCI-Latency Patch for VIA chipsets, which took away about 99% or my random lockups. I've installed Win2K Pro, which doesn't like games very much, so I dual boot into Win98 SE to game. And, now I'm thinking of upgrading again. To an XP1800 (1.53GHz), 431w Enermax Whisper psu, a Cooler Master 001 Heat Pipe hsf, adding a Maxtor 40gig ata-133 hard drive and a new Lite-on 24x CDRW. I was right, this never ends...because by the time i get the $$ together for the above stuff, the KR7A mobo and DDram will have come down. ... is there any kind of O/C Anonymous out there? I may need help. ... 'Hi, my name is Crow, ... and I AM an o/caholic... ...but let's put that aside for a second, and let me show you this new Koolance water cooled box......."'

To 1050 MHz Scores->
To 1090 MHz Scores->
To 1125 MHz Scores->
More Sites with Hardware and Overclocking Info
Paul's Unofficial Abit KT7A FAQ	PriceWatch

Check out the Cooling Mod I did for a 10° Celsius System/CPU temp drop

TOP

The Right Stuff	Sure is tiny, ain't it?
Enlight 7237 Case
300 Watt Enlight P/S
Abit KT7A Motherboard
1GHz Athlon 266 FSB [Not O/C friendly ARGA series]
Global Win WBK-38 HSF (snorkeled)
512 Megs Micron PC133 CAS2 @ 2-2-2 - the Good $tuff
40Gig IBM ATA-100 7200 RPM HDD
Acer 4432 CDRW - old, but effective
Creative Labs 52X CDRom
VisionTek GeForce3 Ti 200 64 mb w/tv-out
US Robotics 2976 PCI Voice/Data/Fax Modem
Cooling: 1- 80x80 Intake 1- 80x80 Exhaust Power Supply fan Northbridge fan AGP chipset fan 1- 60x60x25 Delta - Fresh Air CPU Snorkel 1- 60x60x13 Hard Drive Cooler
Check out the Hi-Tech Cooling Mod I did.... heh..