Abit BH6 Question

[Saberworks]

I currently have an Abit BH6 in my system with a celery 300a overclocked to 450. It's beginning to show its age in the newer games, so I am wanting to upgrade. I need to know how fast a chip my motherboard can handle... I tried Abit's web site but it's been down for a while now... Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Hilander]

I am running the Abit BH6 board with the latest bios flash. It runs my P3 / 800 @133 but is a little unstable because of the 133 bus. Would be fine with a 100 bus I guess. The new settings in the soft menu go up to around 1.2 oor something.

 

[Goi]

AFAIK, the BH6 v1.0x officially supports up to a 700MHz P3, but I've heard people using faster P3s on it. Personally I have a C566@850MHz on my BH6 v1.0x

 

[Saberworks]

Hi Goi,

Are you using a slotket adapter or whatever they're called? Or does that celery come in a slot 1? Either way, can I still get them that can overclock that high? Any sites with the success rates? I bought mine from compucheap.com back in the day, and they were offering guaranteed to overclock to 450... Which was nice, way less risk that way

 

[Goi]

I bought mine to replace my Mendocino C533 which couldn't clock past 600MHz. I bought the C533 along with a generic FC-PGA slotket and it worked well with both the C533 and the C566. Your success rates will obviously vary, mine only does 850MHz at 1.8V. The default voltage is 1.5V. To get 1.8V you will have to apply the BIOS flash trick. I wouldn't really trust any sites with "success rates" since they're often sampled from a very limited and/or specific number of processors. The C566 is being discontinued so you'll be hard pressed to even find any sites that sell them. C600s and C633s though, are more common, and from what I've heard the cc0 versions overclock pretty well.

 

[Saberworks]

Alright, thanks for the help. I think I'll just by the 800/100 to be safe. Thanks again!

 

[Jeff H]

Saberworks, you really have two ways to go, depending on how much $$ you want to spend. First avenue is the Celeron II route. All CII's are produced in the FC-PGA format, meaning you'll need a Slotket adapter. As Goi said, the 566's are going to be getting scarce, so if you want one you'd better act fast. Otherwise, the 600's will be around for a while longer, and they're a good alternative to the 566. Unless you're going to really push it (meaning >100MHz FSB) a Golden Orb HSF will do the job.

Second avenue is a P!!!. Here you need to choose between a Slot1/SECC2 and an FC-PGA format. I personally would go the FC-PGA route as the cpu can then be used on a current day mainboard. The Via Apollo Pro 133 boards come in both slot and socket flavors, but except for one Abit board I've seen (I believe it's the SH6) the 815 based boards are all Socket370/FC-PGA.

I've read numerous success stories in the Abit newsgroup of P!!!-850's working on BH6's. For a detailed explanation of why the VRM/MOS-FET/power thing isn't as big an issue as Abit and Intel would have you believe, go to DejaNews discussion and get to scoop.

FWIW I've been running an FC-PGA P!!!-650 cB0 stepping cpu on a rev1.02 BH6 for five months now w/o even a hiccup. I'm using an Abit Slotket!!! and a Thermaltake Golden Orb HSF. Yesterday I pulled it apart and lapped to bottom of the Gorb and applied Arctic Silver heatsink paste. My temperature went down 7F. Yea, I know we can argue the validity of the temperature monitoring on the BH6, but at least I saw some downward progress in temp.

 

[Netopia]

Saberworks,

Since you originally bought the setup from Russ at [l]www.compucheap.com[/l], you've experienced his service and expertise already... why not just give him a call and get another guarenteed CPU from him? His prices are not the absolute lowest on the web, but I've never heard anyone do anything but sing praises about his service, support and integrity.

Just a thought,

Joe

 

[Saberworks]

Hi Netopia,

Well I checked out compucheap.com and it doesn't look like he's offering the guaranteed overclocks anymore. I sure wish he was! Yes, I've been extremely impressed with Russ's support in the past. Every time I've emailed him, he's gotten back to me within one day, and I've never been left on hold over the phone.

 

[Goi]

Jeff, you said that you applied silver paste and your temperature, according to your BH6 monitoring chip, shows a 7F decrease? That seems really unlikely, as the BH6, at least the v1.0x, has an LM79 chip which can only monitor case/mobo temperature and not the CPU temp, and I really doubt applying silver paste to your CPU would do anything at all to your ambient case/mobo temp.

Anyway, basically if you wanna go really really cheap, get a Celeron128(aka Celermine), if you've got a bit more cash to spare, and PC133 memory, get a P3. In both cases, they can be overclocked pretty high, and will be significantly faster than your C450.

 

[Jeff H]

Goi, I agree w/ you that the BH6 temp monitoring is very crude at best. But, comparing apples to apples I did see a drop in mobo/case temp. I tried to best duplicate the conditions, re same amount of time running and similar applications run. Yea, I know the temp monitoring on the BH6 is crude, that's why I made the comment I did in my first post. However, it sure appears that the combination of lapping the Gorb's bottom and applying the Arctic Silver did help reduce temp. (not that it was bad before). What this should allow me to do is experiment w/ some >100MHz FSB.

I'm going to do that when I reload Win98 (a yearly experience, just to clean it up). At that time I'd ghost an image of my C: drive to CD-R. In the past I've seen some o/c'ing experiments trash the hard drive, and a burned image of the drive will allow me to get up and running in a matter of minutes, should that happen.

 

[Goi]

Jeff...I'm not saying you're lying, but I just find it weird...coz I've changed many different HSF configurations in the past with my BH6(GW FAB24, Alpha P125, GORB) and they didn't do anything to my case/mobo temps. Adding case fans did lower my case/mobo temp though. Lowering ambient temperature also did.

 

[Jeff H]

Goi, there are two things that may have been compromising the performance of the Gorb. One, the heatsink paste that I originally used was some older stuff that I don't think did a very good job. Second, I was amazed at the roughness of the bottom of the Gorb. I did a lot of lapping before I got a completely smooth surface. Of particular note was an area directly in the middle of the Gorb's round bottom (approx. 1mm in diameter) that was indented much more than the rest of the surface.

FWIW I just picked up another Gorb (going into a machine for a friend) and I lapped that too, due to a couple of scratches in the bottom surface. This Gorb differed from mine in the fan mounting method. My fan is in a ring that clicks onto the top surface of the Gorb, while the newer one is screw-mounted to the bottom of the Gorb. Now I see there's a new one that has a square bottom and a new retention clip that doesn't require you to twist the heatsink to mount it.

 

[bozack]

lets keep this topic open a little while longer, I am in the same boat and am considering either a celeron upgrade (can get a 633 for real cheap now) a p3 upgrade (expensive though) or just go with a duron 7000 abit kt7 setup (most expensive but get a better board in the process)

I just got a radeon 32ddr and want a good solution for that, which likes an agp 2 board (bh6 is revision1 but it works) but I dont want to break the bank. any suggestions would be appreciated thanks

 

[Jeff H]

bozack, you did rate them properly, from least to most expensive, when you listed C2, P!!!, and then Duron. Obviously what makes the Duron the most expensive of the three is the replacement of your board. And, at least the good SocketA boards are still relatively more expensive.

Can someone here confirm or refute this: as you move up the MHz scale w/ the C2 getting them to successfully run @ 100MHz becomes more difficult. IE a C2-566 is/was a prime candidate for success @ 850MHz, while a C2-700 @ 1050MHz is a crapshoot. And, is this more a function of the board being able to handle the speed, or just something inherent in the CuMine architecture as you up the MHz's?

 

[bozack]

well in my mind that is how it will work, the duron setup to me is the most expensive since It is mandatory that I buy a new board as well as cpu, whereas with the p3 or celeron the most I will have to buy is a slocket

 

[bozack]

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