Overclocking the 433

The Celeron line is well known as one of the most overclocking-friendly in CPU history. In particular, the Celeron 300 is well-renowned for its ability to hit 450Mhz (100Mhz FSB) consistently. Unfortunately, the same is not true for chips rated higher than 300Mhz. Increasingly smaller percentages of success are seen for 333s, 366s, and 400s. To see how the 433 stacked up, we paired it with an Abit ZM6 motherboard, and started tweaking…

The first setting attempted was a very mild bus speed increase from 66Mhz to 75Mhz, or 488Mhz. The system booted up without problem, even at a default voltage of 2.0. With that success spurring us on, I then moved one step up, to 83Mhz on the bus scale. This 53Mhz jump brought us to 541Mhz, but unfortunately, the chip froze on POST.

Pushing the Envelope

I then incrementally upped the voltage to 2.05, 2.10, and 2.20, to no degree of success. Just as a test, I set the bus to the full 100Mhz FSB at 2/3 AGP. Needless to say, 650Mhz was out of the Celeron's league, and we were forced to accept the fact that our chip was limited to a one-step-up overclocking of 6.5x75Mhz, or 488Mhz.

Overclocking Caveat

The standard attachment to this is that every processor is different, and basically, your mileage may vary. You might stumble across a CPU that runs at 541Mhz, or you might not. It's even possible that the particular CPU you get can't be overclocked at all, although the likelihood of that is admittedly slim. Overclocking with a high-clocked chip is a double-edged sword - you know you're getting a chip from a high-yield, speedy batch, but as you come closer to the practical speed limit of the manufacturing process, you're much more likely to hit the limits of the processor as well.

We've included overclocked benchmarks of the Celeron at 488 as well as the standard 433 for a number of applications.