Torturing the K6-2 400.
A quick guide on how to turn a 400MHz chip into a slightly charred 350Mhz chip.Hello, me again. Gosh, I've been busy this week. Looks like you people are in for some real action here at Hexus.com, 'cos there's more articles on their way!
Way back when, before my "Celeron Era", I had a little K6-2 400. A fine chip it was, whizzing through Quake II like nobody's business. But it's never enough is it? All that performance and you want MORE?!? Well, nobody had done much on Overclocking the K6, so I thought it was worth a shot. Oops.
I think the first rule of Overclocking really should be:
1) Learn when to stop
2) Learn that rule (1) can save you lots of money and really should be
heeded.
Of course, being an innocent young overclocker, in an area not many had
dabbled in before (now I know why) I was all gung ho and eager to rocket my
new chip up to new levels. I felt 500MHz was a good starting point, and
maybe 550MHz. Fortunately the K6-2 is not multiplier locked (thank god), so
Overclocking was easy really. My first move, pump up the bus speed.
I loved my IWill XA-100+. All the mx jumpers where at the front of the
board, so if you slid you hand under the DVD (having removed the case front)
you could adjust the mx without removing the case. 'Andy eh? I turned the
FSB up in notches while turning the mx-plier down. I got to 115x3.5
(403MHz) and I was happy with my efforts. With the L2 cache and memory
having 15% more throughput than before, there was a decent performance
boost. Was I satisfied? Hell no! I was blatantly ignoring, principle number
1.
Now, the cheapo heat sink I had on the chip had been shifting a fair bit of
heat but I felt something more was needed. A quick visit to DeezTech showed
me what a K6-2 looked like, sans heat plate. A few hours and a lot of
scratches later, mine was all naked too, ready to get some super cooling on
it. Except, I hadn't got any, so the cheap heat sink went back on top. At
least it looked cool. Their article is here and this is
what the chip looked like.
