Hi all,

I built my wife a system using spare parts that I had on hand, including a Pentium M 755 (Dothan, 2.0 GHz) processor, an Asus P4C800 Deluxe motherboard and a CT-479 adapter. I topped it up with 1.5 gigs of DDR 400, a Radeon 9600XT, two 80 GB drives in RAID 0 and an LG 18X DVD-RW. She shouldn't have much trouble checking her E-Mail with this rig!

For the fun of it, I bumped the CPU up to 2.3 GHz (166 FSB, 14X multiplier) and ran Prime95 on the system overnight with no reported errors. I think that this CPU can do even better.

Do any of you have experience overclocking the Pentium M? What's your best result with this intriguing CPU?

Not me. But i have seen quite a few reviews of the various speed-grades, and most seem to be able to hit in the 2.7GHz range without much fuss. Keeping them cool seems to be very easy. GL

Lol... the Dotties are awsome overclockers, the pre-decessors of the core 2 duo's.

I had a PM 740 running at 2.8+ and it really rocked, a 1.1gig OC!
It was my baby...

Nice O/C. From the reviews i've seen, they completely rock in games(especially when OC'ed), but not so good in multi-media apps(in part..due to the lack of SSE3).

My roommate had the same CPU and tested to see how far he could push it to run stable, without increasing the voltage. He got to 2.4ghz[14 x 172mhz]. He them raised the voltage by .1 and got it to 2.82[14 x 202]. I'd recommend you not mess with the voltages, it being your wifes system, but if you do, try not to push it by much...

Hi rushfan,

Dothans are wonderful,

Your 755 should do 2.6-2.7 on air, so try - 166 FSB, 16X multiplier = 2656, my 725 did that – stable.

If you’ve heard all 7*5 series will do about 170-175 on air, so 166 is great.

The 7*0 series are the cream and can have a FSB of 275. Mine runs 266 FSB at 10X = 2666.

Aye... in games I got even better performance than with my opty 170... but... not the best for multimedia stuff, didn't matter to me though as I only used it for gaming.

It's funny though... in the middle of the AMD glory era... this notebook CPU with a CT-479 adapter wooped everything in super pi benchies.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/05/ [...] _netburst/

article from a couple of years ago on pentium m overclocking...

'morning, all. Nice to wake up to all these replies!

I guess that I have a little more homework to do. At the least, I need to know more about what temperature ranges to expect. This modest overclock was achieved without increasing the voltage.

The cooler that accompanies the CT-479 is pretty light duty but on the flip side, it's nearly silent. I have enabled the fan speed control in the bios but even before I did that, it was very quiet.

Hmmm. I just have to get my wife out of the house for a couple of hours...

Some more PM740 scores achieved... with a 7800GS+...

Hi rushfan,

The P4C800 Deluxe is a great overclocker with the Dothan and ct-479. I flashed to P4C800 E Deluxe to access the multiplier in the bios, as well as Vcore. With the new flash, I lost the sound card, the LAN, and the RAID controller. No matter, I have a sound card, a wireless lan card, and don’t use the RAID.

Voltage increase: I played with the vcore up to 1.6v, with stock cooler, and max temps were 64 degrees C under load. This is no problem for the dothans; they are rated at 100 degrees C unlike the Pentium 4’s. Didn’t need that much vcore for the overclock however. My 740 would do 233FSB stock vcore (11X multi), and with Crystal CPUID 49, I could even downclock to 6X multi (6X, 233FSB – 1400GHz) with 0.7v, a great setting for surfing or watching movies. Evidently, very light on electricity, and extremely quiet. Yes, a great 740!

When I used 4 sticks of memory, the board didn’t like the overclock as much, so use 2 sticks if you can for better results (as much as 30FSB difference with my experience with better memory timings).

I’ve had many computers, Pentium II’s, and III’s, K2’s and K3’s, Durons (1300, 1600 and 1800 – love the 1800 by the way), celeries (300A and 2.0), athlon xp’s (1700+ and Barton 2500+), and Pentium 4’s (1.3, 1.6A, 1.8A, 2.533B, 2.4C, 2.8C, 3.06) and Dothans, (725 – 1.6 and 740 1.733). And yes, all of them overclocked to max. Stayed away from Prescott's.

So far, nothing compares to the Dothan. I’ve played with 64’s. FX’s and Core2’s and honestly, my Dothan, is still “Snappy” and, I was so happy with my Dothan, never had the need to upgrade. Even with Vista.

So, if you would like any info, feel free to ask.

DrMaV,

Thanks for the info - there are some interesting tidbits in there.

I settled for 2.48 GHz @ 1.4v. I like that number - 2.48 GHz - it just sounds right! Prime95 failed after 3 hours at 1.3625v so I got lazy and went straight for 1.4v, skipping a couple of incremental increases. I let the program run overnight and it was still cruching away this morning so I am pretty confident that the system is stable at that speed.

I don't know if you're aware of this but there is a beta BIOS available for the P4C800 Deluxe (non 'E') that supports the CT-479 which will give you back the LAN and other items that you lost. I'm lucky that I had an old 2.6 GHz Socket 478 Celeron lying around that allowed me to flash to the new BIOS because the CT-479 adapter wasn't recognized when I first installed it. The beta BIOS is numbered 1021 and is available on the same page as the other P4C800 Deluxe downloads.

I agree that the P4C800 is a great overclocking board when used with the CT-479. All of the BIOS options are available - FSB, multiplier, voltage etc. whereas with some other boards, options disappear when using the Pentium M and/or CT-479. I am especially pleased because I got the motherboard and CPU for free!

Thanks for your input.