K6-2 & Athlon Clocks

[DHR]

The old grey matter isn't what it used to be, so I can't remember for sure, but I'm not mad for saying back then us oldies could get big clocks am I?

I seem to have my K6-2 550mhz hitting 1Ghz and an Athlon going from 1Ghz to 1.4-1.5Ghz, never thought I'd forget either but they seem like huge leaps, I'm not making it up right

This was when an OC was way more noticeable, so I think I trust myself, but just wanted that little bit of validation

 

[PieEater]

I think the max the K6-2 got to was 600Mhz but if you had the 400 a 50% overclock was fairly easy to achieve by moving a couple of jumpers on the motherboard and what was got me into overclocking. The 1Ghz Athlon Thunderbird was my next CPU and I had it running stabile at 1.4Ghz 24/7 I think that chip motherboard and cooler were my first purchases from OCUK and remember them selling pre-tested chips with the pencil lines drawn on to set the clock speed, I remember using silver conductive paint on mine. Definitely a blast from the past, it's wierd that over the years we've gone from overvolting to get extra performance to undervolting.

 

[Armageus]

Not a chance that a k6-2 hit 1ghz

 

[DHR]

Not a chance that a k6-2 hit 1ghz

Has to be the Athlon then which tallies with @PieEater, did think it would have been a bit mad, gutted I can't remember properly now though!

400Mhz to 550-600Mhz rings a bell now you mention it, wondering where that's where I remembered the 550Mhz from in the first place.

 

[Phemo]

The original Slot A Athlons didn't overclock massively, you could get perhaps between 100 and 200MHz from them but they were more of a pain to do because you needed to decase or cut a chunk of the case off to plug a GFD into them.

The Thunderbird Athlons could fare a bit better but similar gains were more common. I remember buying an 850MHz from OcUK that had been modified for unlocked multiplier and tested to 1GHz which was awesome at the time. With a bit of luck you could overclock the later revisions a bit higher, like I think 1.1GHz chips could do 1.4GHz, but none of them really went much above 1.4GHz. I remember some lucky people with lower 700MHz Athlon and Durons doing speeds of 1GHz and beyond though.

The Athlon XP Barton core chips were a different story though. The 2500+ was 1.83GHz and overclocks to 2.5GHz and beyond were common.

I do miss the days of crazy overclocks. I had a P4 2.4C that would do 3.2GHz so an 25% overclock. Then there were the Core 2 Duos where 800MHz+ overclocks were common and I think the last huge overclocker I had was an i7 920 that was 2.66GHz stock and ran at 4GHz for years.

 

[Mr Evil]

I had an Athlon 700 which I overclocked to 1GHz. As I recall, the original Athlon was the first CPU that people were able to get past the so-called "GHz barrier".

 

[DHR]

Although it's still fun to do, I'm reaching the point where, probably because of how I use my PC, the OC is for the hell of it, not for any real noticeable end user gain. The benefits for me, other than seeing benchmark numbers, aren't really felt to the degree it's worth it, where as back then 20-40% extra performance for very little was noticeable in games and even boot up times.

Think I'm more about quiet cooling and longevity these days, than a bigger benchmark scores.

...I really do want to watercool one day though, that is still on my list of things to do

 

[B@Th*nG]

Not quite as old but the infamous q6600 was like 2.4ghz to 3.8ghz if you were lucky.

My first clock was a k6-2 and then a duron after that, then a core 2 duo I think, which had a fair clock on it - sure I had an athlon in there somewhere before the duo - but nothing clocked like the q6600.

So much so I went straight from the q6600 to a Ryzen 3600. That puppy ran for 11/12 years clocked to the absolute balls; what a hero. It was definitely limping a bit towards the end and had to drop it a few hundred MHz to let the old boy rest.

I don't see much point with the 3600, though the flck is at 1800 I suppose. When I stick a 5800x3d in there eventually I'll -30 it too I expect, but it's not quite the same as that enormous leap in grunt.

 

[Rroff]

Not quite as old but the infamous q6600 was like 2.4ghz to 3.8ghz if you were lucky.

Had one sitting at 3.825GHz 1.6V water cooled for like 2 years doing various heavy weight tasks like folding, longer video encoding tasks, etc. then either my dad or another relative (can't remember now who had what) had it for another few years at stock without a hitch - bulletproof CPUs.

The Core 2 Q9550 and close models were nuts as well - stock 2.4-2.83GHz (3GHz for the QX models) could do 4.5+GHz on the right motherboard.