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Can I overclocking AMD Athlon XP CPU safely ? How to overclock ? What is the safe level to overclock (i.e. the precentage over the actual speed) ?

hi

i think that you cant overclock ur cpu (safely) bcause its ur first time .
u dont mentioned what processor and motherboard u have .overclocking depends on motherboard more than ur cpu.i dont know why u want to overclock ur cpu but i can give u an estimate , if u have a LOCKED processor having 133 mhz FSB (eg AMD ATHLON or DURON) than u can bump up the FSB (Front Side BUS) up to 145 mhz from the motherboards bios.FIRST OF ALL TO OVERCLOCK ANYTHING(CPU, GRAPHICS CARD ,CDRW) MAKES SURE TO GIVE IT BEST POSSIBLE COOLING SOLUTION because overclocking means that u r running a product beyonds its specification or the limit the manufacturer made it to run.

so in my example i have a GIGABYTE motherboard for amd processors thats GA-7VA (VIA KT400 CHIP)

now my processor is a locked athlon xp 1700+ (to unlock the processor u have to bridge the gaps on the cpu its unsafe bcause if u do that wrong your processor will be damged)
i have two ways to overclock my cpu

FIRST i have a utility that was bundled with my motherboard called easytune (bundled with most gigabyte motherboards) it will safely increase my processor fsb untill it reaches the max(145 mhz) and then stops

the second method is that i go into my motherboards bios setup and increase my fsb in one mhz increment untill it reaches the max

make sure to keep ur bios update for overclocking(the newest possible bios)

and make sure to lock ur agp and pci bus locked so ur other components running (graphics card on agp ,sound card on pci etc) dont get hurts

because when u r increasing the fsb your pci and agp buses both are increasing.

u cant get a boast in 3d performance from ur processor overclocking if u have an old gpu

the safe level of percentage depends on ur system (ur system mainboard ,its chipset,processor the cooling u give and its power supply)

i can increase my processor fsb upto 145mhz without any extra cooling
so u can call it normal

133*11 =1463 mhz for original athlon xp

145*11= 1595 mhz for overclocked

but if u have a geforce 2 mx card(like me ) than u wold get this

running MAX PAYNE normal 1024 res 30 fps
running overclock 1024 31 fps

running max payne 640 RES 50 fps
overcloocked max payne 640 rES 59 fps