Overclocking For Dummies

[Ant]

One of my pet machines (on which I'm typing now!) is an elderly Gateway 350Mhz Intel Pentium 2 running Win 98SE with 198Mb ram.
It's used for little more than general browsing, email etc which it does reasonably well.
However, it dislikes doing more than one thing at a time, for example streaming internet radio stutters when opening a programme file.
I'm guessing its running out of grunt too early, and so I wonder if it would be beneficial to try overclocking to get a little more horsepower out of it. If so, have any Ppruners successfully done it, and how?

[Parapunter]

Overclocking Simplified (http://www.technoyard.com/hardware/miscellaneous/overc/page_1.html)

[Guest 112233]

Potential probs -Power supplies ! (no pun intended), overclocking may also over stress some of the system components - Heat disapation probs - Can the chip & Machine BIOS support overclocking - No Doubt Mod Saab Dastard (Anagram of somthing Odd ?) - PPRUNE MOD (Read GOD) will spot this and dispense some words of Wisdom better than I -Be patient let the old Gal/Guy strut its stuff as per manufacture - Its still working - Please note are you operating behind a router the operating system may be a bit long in the tooth - I'm an offender now going on the streight & level . beware BOTS .Can you add more RAM ? :hmm:

CAT III

[Keef]

Overclocking is a way to squeeze a bit more performance out of a machine, with the risk of killing it quite quickly. It doesn't change a tortoise into a hare. If the machine isn't up to the job, overclocking won't solve that.

That machine sounds very old by current standards - you could pick up something significantly more powerful for not-a-lot, I would think.

[Bushfiva]

Others are correct, overclocking won't make a tangible difference to your computer.

If you look at your Gateway manual you may find that your particular computer was actually designed to take a range of CPUs at different pricing points. Since you mention 350MHz, it's probably a Slot 1 motherboard with the CPU sitting on a little riser card. CPUs in that family were rated at 350, 400 and 450MHz. A used 450MHz CPU would be almost free now, and a very simple swap. It would give you about 25% more bang.

You need to find the maximum "clock multiplier" supported by your motherboard: this will be a setting starting at 3.0 and going to at least 4.5 in your case. Look at the biggest number: If 6.0, then 600MHz is the fastest you can go.

You can probably use Pentium III CPUs on Slot 1 cards: they're electrically compatible. You'd want a CPU that is no faster than the largest clock multiplier, and which operates at 100MHz front side bus (that's your existing memory speed). Off-hand, that would be 350, 400, 450 MHz as a Pentium II, then 450, 500, not 533, 550, some 600 MHz Pentium III. You can't use a "B" CPU: 533B, 600B. There are some none-B 600 MHz CPUs.

A little bit more RAM might also help, but there's no need to go beyond 256MB or 512MB. It may not be cost-effective: old RAM is in great demand. It will cost more than the CPU.

Well, that's way more than you probably needed to know. If it were my system and I needed it to work, I'd leave it as-is unless I came across a 350MHz PII Slot 1 part. If I didn't need it to survive the experiment, I'd pop in any Slot 1 CPU other than 533B or 600B, and see what happened for 10 seconds. Slot 1 is very robust.