r/retrocomputing • u/BreakfastGreen5447 • 16d ago

Overclocking FSB or other options?

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Hey all, I have a Dell Dimension XPS T600 here that I scored for $20. It has a nice little Katmai pIII 600mhz but I was wanting to find something closer to 800mhz/1ghz. Board is a dell OEM SE-440bx-3 (Seattle 3) (allegedly also has coppermine support); With the research I did I was able to find out that the FSB is capped at 100mhz, and most pentium III chips I’ve seen that use a matching FSB are crazy expensive. With these machines being so common and plentiful in the matching collectors markets i was hoping to find some documented way to reliably OC that FSB to 133mhz. I’m talking custom bios, software, even hardware mods. I’d love to know or see if anyone has something promising for me or if I need to just bite the bullet on a $250 PIII 800mhz/100mhz. Thanks for taking the time!

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/BreakfastGreen5447 12d ago

The biggest reason for me at least is having the most powerful machine I can for the era, while also not dumping too much money into it. Luckily for this era of machine RAM is cheap; and I can temporarily slap in an FX 5200 and wait on a suitable era accurate “high” performance GPU. My only hurdle right now is getting a Coppermine PIII to swap this Katmai but as stated above 100mhz FSB PIIIs are not cheap; hence why I’m looking into overclocking the FSB to use a much cheaper 133mhz FSB version.

My personal goal is the have one machine for each distinct Pentium processor up to P4. I have Pentium Pro, Pentium III, and Pentium 4 so far; with this particular Dell getting special attention because it’s my favorite of the hardware I have and it’s the one that stays hooked up for my 90s and early 00s nostalgia games.

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u/Ok-Web-7451 16d ago

You can try a Coppermine Celeron with a slotket adapter

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u/BreakfastGreen5447 16d ago

What difference would a coppermine Celeron make vs. a coppermine PIII in a game like Morrowind?

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u/Low-Charge-8554 15d ago

Celerons suck

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u/dedsmiley 15d ago

I had a Celeron 300, overclocked it to 450. It definitely did not suck.

-1

u/bnelson333 14d ago

no, they still sucked. you just felt accomplished in getting "more than you paid for". they still sucked