Written By:
Date Posted: October 12, 2001

Test Bed

AMD Thunderbird "AYHJA" Core, 1.4GHz (10.5x133), 1.6 (12x133), 1.61 (12x134), 1.61 (12x140)
ABIT KG7-RAID
512MB Kingston Value DDR ram
2 x 60GB Maxtor Diamondmax, RAID-0
MSI StarForce 822 GeForce 3, Det. XP v21.81

Windows XP
VIA 4 in 1 v4.33

I am not going to bombard you with every possible overclocking combination, but rather post only the results that were successful. What that means is that only the highest overclocking results that was able to allow me to play 30 minutes of Quake 3, run SiSoft Sandra and CPUID, without crashing will be displayed. I managed overclocks at lower speeds (but higher than stock), but there's no point of displaying them. vCore settings were 1.85v for all the overclocked scores.

Sisoft Sandra - CPU

(left) 1.4GHz (1.75v, 10.5x133) and (right) 1.6GHz (1.85v, 12x133)

At 1.6Ghz, the Thunderbird destroys all the recorded systems in SiSoft Sandra. 12x133 ran perfectly, but any higher multiplier was a no go.

Sisoft Sandra - CPU

(left) 1.61GHz (1.85v, 12x134) and (right) 1.61GHz (1.85v, 11.5x140)

Here, we concentrate more on the FSB. I'm not sure why these scored lower than 12x133. Usually, the faster FSB will outperform adjustments by multiplier alone. At a multiplier of 12x, I couldn't even get a FSB of 135, but managed 134FSB instead. For comparison purposes, I wanted a FSB combined with a lower multiplier to see if the FSB would be faster. 140FSB was the most stable I was able to attain, which is too bad since I've seen higher online, and at 140, it only marginably outperforms 134.

Prev Next