I've just received my Celeron 300A and have been trying to get it to
overclock to 450MHz on a P2B; so far not much luck, but many report being
able to.  It boots into Win98 at 337MHz and 375MHz; bus speed 75 and 83,
respectively but I haven't checked the stability over time yet.  It's
pretty fast by itself at 300MHz anyway so I don't feel a loss (of course, I
upgraded from a P-75).  I'm thinking about moving to an Abit BH6 as many
have reported better luck at OC'ing this chip.  It's a gamble but a cheap
one compared to buying a PII 450. It's not immoral, illegal and it doesn't
make you fat...but you should do your homework.  Again, the standard
disclaimer: you lose warranty (I bought OEM so it doesn't have one anyway)
and risk burning up your chip (I like to gamble; but haven't read about
anybody yet who did burn up there chip unless they did something stupid
like run it at 3.0V); and it will most likely shorten the life of the chip
(a chip will usually last 15 years; OPINION: if mine will OC to 450 for one
year I'd feel I got what I wanted out of it).  Let's face it, chips are
obsolete in 5 years, anyway.  If you OC safely (watch voltage and temp) you
should be okay.  Read the overclocking, asus, and abit newsgroups (check
http://www.dejanews.com) and try to learn from others mistakes [ remember,
not everyone who posts to a newsgroup knows what they are talking about so
try to get a feel by reading LOTS of articles from different people].

Some people believe that different S-Spec models have better results for
OC'ing but there really isn't any scientific evidence for this.  I bought
SL2WM model which many have reported success with, but so far I haven't.
You also may need to vary the voltage which on a P2B involves covering some
of the pins on the CPU (the Abit has SoftMenu voltage regulation).

Last word: the Celeron 300A is one of the most overclockable chips made
now; unlike the earlier versions of the Celeron, it has an onboard cache of
128k and this is built *into* the chip, not along side of it like the
PII-300+ chips.  This makes it exceptional for OC'ing.  It has the same
Deschutes (0.25 micron) core as the PII 450.  Toms Hardware
(http://www.tomshardware.com) reports benchmarks of the OC'd C300A (at
450MHz) outperforming the PII-450 by a hair. This is probably because of
the location of the cache in the Mendocino series chips (C300A, C333). The
Celerons are all multiplier locked meaning you want to choose one you have
a chance to OC. For example, the C333 has a multiplier of 5.0 which would
mean you would need to be able to run it a 500MHz (on a 100MHz bus) if you
want to take full advantage of OC'ing but this is not a real likely
scenario, so you should stick with the 300A.  Many have had good experience
with the C266 also. These do not have a cache and do not perform as in
benchmarks (even OC'd) but are a lot cheaper (about half the 300A) and can
give decent results.  Hope this helps...good luck!

Okay, really the lastword this time:  the chip you get may or may not
overclock. It's a crapshoot so you need to be willing to settle for its
rated speed and still be happy if it doesn't OC for you.

Don Gray

At 02:07 PM 9/22/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I am looking to build a new system with a ASUS P2B
>mother board and a Celeron ?? chip.
>
>Question:
>Looking at over clocking which is the best Celeron to use?
>

Don Gray
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