Introduction

The need for speed

Equipped with AMD's fastest CPU, we felt it was only a given for us to look into ways to make our 1.1GHz Athlon run faster. In our original 1.1GHz review we paired all testbeds with the fastest video card (the GeForce 2 Ultra) and motherboard we have in our possession. However, one aspect we didn't thoroughly cover was overclocking.

Sure it may sound crazy to some to overclock an $853, 1.1GHz processor, but we know there are those of you out there that always strive for the best performance, regardless of your existing hardware configuration. If this fits your description (or you just like to read about fast hardware), this article is for you.

What exactly happened when we overclocked our 1.1GHz Athlon CPU? As we mentioned in our original review, 1.2GHz of pure silicon bliss. To add to the performance potential of our 1.2GHz system we dialed up the speed of our GeForce 2 Ultra to the tune of 290 core/500MHz memory for this article.

With so much power inside this system, it would probably be illegal to export this overclocked setup to some third-world countries.

In our thirst to play (err, test) even more hardware, we also tossed our 1GHz Pentium III processor onto ABIT's BE6-II motherboard. With Intel's recall of the 1.13GHz Pentium III, 1GHz is the fastest clock speed available from Intel for the next few months.

With the KT7-RAID powering our AMD system, we've combined the fastest CPU/motherboard combinations currently available for both AMD and Intel platforms. Both systems are prepped and ready to go, so who came out on top?

Editor's Note: Wondering how to overclock your NVIDIA video card? With the latest Detonator drivers, the technique hasn't changed. Here's an excerpt from our ELSA GLADIAC review on overclocking the GeForce 2 GTS:

To overclock your video card, simply open the Windows Registry Editor by typing "regedit" in the Run Menu of Windows. Then open the following directory: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global" Right click on the "Global" directory and create a new key titled "NVTweak." Next, right-click on the NVTweak key and create a new dword value named "Coolbits." Adjust the value of Coolbits to "3" by double clicking on it and entering "3" in the value data field.

After a quick Windows restart go to the "Additional Properties" section of your display settings. Click on the "Hardware Options" tab and checkmark the "Allow clock frequency adjustments" setting. After that, you're ready to begin overclocking your card!