Can't overclock amd 2800+

SO check it out I got a CPU from ebay (yeah I know what was I thinking). Moving on, what I am trying to do is make the best of my emachine to give it to my brother. I put a new HDD in, max the Ram to 2gigs, and well put in a new CPU. Now, when order the it was advertised as 2.1ghz cpu. When i installed the cpu I'm registering a cheesy 1.7ghz. I contact the seller he's telling me that i need to overclock it. I went into the Bios, guess what can't change anything, MOBO doesnt support it. What I'm looking for now is some alternate options. Don't tell to get a new computer or build, cause that is what I'm doing after this one!!

 

Sorry, but you are SOL.

Not going to bang you on all of the "why didn't you . . " toom many to list.

If the mobo doesn't have adjustable clock settings, you're stuck.

 

I was afraid that was going to be my answer. So, this is probably another dumb question. I have an old abit kv7 with out any disks, drivers or manual. How risk would it be to switch out the MOBO? It's was salvaged from a buddy's old computer. Looks to be in decent shape, I read some where that it support the barton amd 2800+. I just dont want to change the MOBO, and have it not work. I'm relatively new to this custom computering. Thanks.

 

The Abit KV7 was a fine board in it's day...but that day was long before the 2800+ came out.

I assume this is a Athlon 64 2800+...if so, it is a Socket 754 chip...and the Abit KV7 is a Socket 462 board.

On top of that, emachines typicaly have a custom formfactor mainboard, or microATX...I highly doubt that you could fit a KV7 into the case anyway.

The Athlon 64 2800+ was only a 1800MHZ chip...if it is only registering as a 1700, it might be because these chips were typicaly either unlocked, or "half-locked"...where you could lower the multiplier, but you could not raise it. I would double-check in your bios...there might at least be a multiplier section...it might even be jumpers or dip switches on something that old.

 

No the CPU is a barton amd athlon xp 2800+. I was also wonder if it would be smarter to upgrade to a FIC AM39L (with is for the eMachine) and it supports that CPU?

 

I don't know why you are "married" to the eMachines case, but that's probably your main "stopper".

It probably has a fixed backplate, proprietary power supply, non-standard form factor for a mother board, which are all issues which will prevent you from using an off-the-shelf motherboard.

You have 2 options, spend 0 money or spend a lot of money.

Spend 0 money - leave it alone and run it "as-is".

Spend a lot of money - forklift all of that proprietary crap and build from the ground up.

Frankenstein upgrades using eMachines as a core are not economical. Any money you throw at it is better spent on a new build.

Overclocking a Barton to 3500+ isn't that great anyway (yes, i've done it). the performance increase is not overly noticeable.