Combo
Of The Year: The Abit BM6 & Celeron 366 @ 550
For
those who haven’t been following Intel’s Celeron success since last year, a small
ruckus must be made. Over a year ago, Intel’s little wonder, the Celeron 300A
(the "A" stands for 128KB of L2 cache) started the excitement. At the
same time the 300 MHz socket-370 chip was being produced, so was the Pentium II
450 and shortly thereafter, the unveiling of the Pentium 3 lineup followed. So,
the question is how can the chip giant push a seemingly slower version of the
P2 and P3? The short answer is they didn’t. Since the Celeron was just a "cheapened"
Pentium II, the 300 part was off. The "366" indicates the actual clock
speed of the processor. The "550" indicates what it can really do, given
good surrounding components.
I wonder
who was the first overclocker that bought a 300A and accidentally had the front
side bus (FSB) set at 100 MHz instead? yeah sure, 450 out of a little
300! Why spend more? That statement has had revolutionary consequences in the
computer tweaker department even if the retail world never took much notice. Now,
the 366 MHz Celeron, the "A" is assumed, has stolen the spotlight on
the venerable 300. The king is dead; long live the king!
Motherboards
Just
because I single out the Abit BM6 don’t think for a minute that other socket-370
and Slot 1 (with an adapter) motherboards can’t accomplish the same feat. They
can and your choice will depend on what features you require in addition to stability.
Technically, it makes better sense to get a motherboard with the actual slot/socket
configuration you will use rather than using an adapter. All adapters introduce
an extra set of connections, which decrease the chances of reaching overclocking
nirvana. But, if you’re stuck with the wrong slot/socket sometimes adapters are
the only route.
The
Abit BM6 is a great package. Socket-370 only, it uses Intel’s ubiquitous 440BX
chipset and has bus speeds up to 133 MHz. For more detailed info on this product,
click here.
What is crucial to ramping up a 66 MHz chip to the next level is support for the
100 MHz FSB and AGP 2/3 divider. Unfortunately, like many other socket-370 MB’s,
the BM6 FSB’s have huge leaps in the lower range. The BM6’s list starts with 66
MHz, then 75, 83, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 115, 120, 124, and ends with 133. Until
you manage to reach to 124 FSB, the PCI divider stays at 1/3 which means that
your add-in cards need to be extraordinarily stable if you’re lucky enough to
venture into the 110-120 FSB area.
The
Chip
My sample is from the far off country of Malaysia.
Some interesting numbers are SL36C, and L9421011-0632. The first alphanumeric
signifies Intel’s "S" spec and the L942 indicates the year and week
of manufacture. In this case, my sample was birthed in the 42nd
week of 1999. While some S specs are better/worse than others, the SL36C gets
the nod for being the overall champion of consistent overclockability. Of
course, the Celeron 366 still sports 128KB of L2 cache running at full clock
speed (whatever you can get it to run at).
