The first thing you need to know about Overclocking is you can't just plug in numbers you read in a forum thread and expect it to fly!

You have to work things up gradually, usually 5-10MHZ increments at first (Your CPU is at the top end of the XP range, so probably only 5MHZ) and then fine tune with 1-2MHZ increments...testing for stability with Super Pi 1MB test inititally as a quick check, and then using OCCT, Prime 95, or Folding@Home after words as you think you are nearing your max...one clue it's not quite right will be a long boot time.

Make sure also understand when Overclocking there is alwasy a risk that you can damage hardware, but if you use a bit of common sense and have good components that are designed for it in the first place, then you should be fine (Especially the power supply, a name brand like Antec in the 400+ watt range, and adeqaute case and CPU cooling are just as important!)

Just don't expect to OC your E-Machine or a Dell with a new motherboard and no other changes (With OC capabilities)and not have issues!

As always, never OC something that has files on it you need to keep, either grab an old spare hard drive and back stuff up to it, or at minimum, partion your hard drive and store the good stuff on the secondary (D) part so if you end up killing your OS installation, you can just format the C drive and not loose the "Good Stuff"

When bench testing for high scores, a fresh format with all the latest driver updates (MotherboardChipset, Videoe card, DX-9c, etc..) is the way to go, a year old install of XP is gonna be full of crap that will make you think your number are much lower than what they should be when looking at other peoples test results.

In the years that I have been Overclocking, I have never killed a CPU by Overclocking, as long as you keep the temps under 50c, they are pretty tough..With a Mobile 2500+ I am able to use 2.0v for bench testing and 1.85-1.9v for daily use...BUT, I have a Antec 550 Watt true control power supply, Shuttle AN-35N Ultra (N-Force 2 Ultra Chipset) and some BH-5 ram that can take the added voltages without complaint.

For cooling, I am using an all copper Thermalright SP-97 (One of the first heat sinks to use "Heat Pipes) with a 80MM tornado fan that pumps lots of CFM acrossed it...I use a rheostat rated at 25 watts to cut the rpms down and keep the noise level tolerable when I am not bench testing with it.

For people with cooling that is just fair to midrange, you should probably stick in the 1.65~1.8v range, like I kinda said earlier, watch your temps, if the fully loaded temps (100% for at least an hour) are in the low 40's, you can add more voltage, if they start peaking up over 50c, then back it down...and of course, weather or ambient temp has an effect on how much you can run, colder is alwasy better! (70F or less is ideal)

Using a tool such as "Clock Gen" or "Sys tool" can often help you get the feel for things "safely" (It will just lock up if you go to far, and can usually just reboot and start over) until you get more familiar with things in the Bios...adjusting ram timings or mem ratios and voltages will still generally need to be done in the bios before hand though....but setting thing from the bios is the best way to go, and will be more "Permanet" and not require fiddling with it every time you reboot.

Learning how to use these settings in total is somewhat of a "Black Art" and can be hard to master at first, so don't give up after the first try if things don't come out as expected...it requires lots of time and dedication to get the hang of things...read read read, and then read some more!

Not every CPU, board or ram will end up OCing the same, some do well, others barely get above stock, it's often "Luck of the draw"

A 3000+ or 3200+ are not known to be the worlds best overclocker sometimes..often only reaching 2.3GHZ, though some can run in the 2.4-2.5ghz range. ..it's just not as common.

That's partially because these CPU's are allready towards the top of the food chain when they were sent out the door by AMD, a 1700+ that starts at 1.5GHZ will appear to be "Magical" by comparrison when it reaches 2.4GHZ, because it gained 700MHZ, and not the measily 200MHZ a 3200+ may gain.

Getting the "Right CPU" is part of the key to getting a succesfull OC from the XP series, The Mobile 2400~2600+ are "Top Guns" because they are "Cherry Picked" cores designed to run at low voltages and higher temps than the standard desktop versions..and they also have the larger 512k cache of the "Barton" series of XP's.

Second on the list would be any CPU that has DLT3C in the "Stepping" (The code on the CPU die itself, a little black sticker with lots of numbers) The "L" in the DLT3C stands for the voltage AMD sets for it to use, and is the lowest you will find at 1.50v.

They are typically found in 1700+, 1800+ 1900+ and 2100+ versions, and will have the smaller 256K cache.

Here is AMD's "Breakdown" of what all the codes mean in your stepping, remember, the higher the voltage AMD sets for you CPU, typically the less they will OC, because the true "Cherry Cores" don't need as much voltage to sustain a given speed.

© AMDboard.com - AMD CPU Identification

Another good read:

TBreds or Low Breds?

Using air cooling, almost all of the low end "Thoroughbred B" and "Barton" cores will reach 2.0~2.2GHZ with little trouble and a decent HS, the "Premium cores" I mentioned earlier will reach 2.4-2.5GHZ, and if you are real lucky, you may find one that can run in the 2.6~2.8GHZ range, but don't count on it!

If you have an earlier "Palamino" core, they don't do very well and run hot "Thoroughbred A" versions run a bit cooler, but don't have much overhead..but these CPU's are not very common anymore, so I will not dwell on them....it's best to avoid them in general.

A word on Motherboards..I won't be covering anything but the 400MHZ versions, the 333FSB boards can be used, if yours is a 266FSB version, you should probably look for something else!

The best Overclockers are the Abit NF-7S Rev 2. (The earlier versions, some of the later ones had cheap capacitors, and would not handle the higher voltages) Abit AN-7 (A lightly updated version of the NF-7) and other venerable DFI LanParty Rev.B...there are a few other half decent ones out there from Epox (RDA 3+) and the Shuttle AN-35N Ultra for example, but these are the true "Kings" for a the XP CPU's.

The Abit ones are the ones to seek out if you are after max CPU speed and may be the ones to have if you are thinking of water or extrem cooling, since they have the highest CPU voltage available (2.1v) but are a bit shy in the FSB department (Around 225FSB)compared to DFI unless you do some volt mods.

DFI on the other hand, is all about FSB, with the right Bios version, they can easily reach 260FSB with no mods very easily! (So you better have some ram capable of DDR500 to take advantage of it) The downfall for them, is they only have 2v as the maximum CPU voltage, and tend to be on the low side, mine would show and actual 1.96v under load, wich kind of held my max CPU speed down a bit.

One last topic here, any CPU made after a certain date (Withthe exceptin of the Mobile version) will have the CPU multiplier locked, and while some may OC reasonably well, it does not have the flexability of allowing you to play around as much, and limits you to and OC of the FSB only, wich means your baord must be able to spin up a bit!

Ok..now on to the good stuff!

You should probably first is to start by isolating the RAM and FSB from the CPU, just to make sure you don't hit the CPU wall first, and think you have maxed out your system at a lower speed and performance level than it can actually atttain.

To isolate the motherboards FSB, raise the NB voltage above stock (1.6-1.8v) lower the multiplier by 1 (From say 11, to 10 or whatever was stock -1) and also use a "Big" ram divider... like 3/4 or 1/2 to slow the ram down so it will not artifically limit you.

Then you raise the FSB until instability is reached..and then back it down till it is capable of passing a torture test, depending on your board, it can be 215-260FSB.

Then..go back to a 200MHZ FSB, and raise your ram volts to 2.8v (Safe for most ram..Bh-5 ram can take up to 3.6V with proper cooling..like fan blowing on it) and set the memory divider at 100% or 1 to1, then start rasing FSB again until instability is reached, and then back it down till it can passa stability test.

Now, go back to stock again (CPU Multiplier) or even one above stock if your CPU is unlocked upwards, and use the memory divider again, and raise CPU voltage (1.6-1.8v) and start raising FSB again until unstable, then back it down till it once again passes a stability test.

Now, you should know your max of the Motherboard, Ram and CPU, you should be able to combine them all...say your max motherboard speed is 260 FSB (DFI LP) your max ram speed is 225 (DDR 450) and your CPU speed is 2.5GHZ.

You can go two ways (Assuming your CPU is unlocked) you can go for 10x250 and a ram divider than keeps its speed at DDR430 speeds, probably something like 3/4...but this is not your best option.

The "Optimal" way would be more like 11x and 227FSB with no memory divider...AMD's respond best to a 1 to 1 memory to CPU ratio.

One last tip, avoid using the "Half Multipliers" if at all possible, I won't get into the "Technical Reasons" for it (Unless requested) but just know they are generally to be avoided..use the "Whole Numbers" such as 10x, 11x or 12x.

You may wonder why I spent time on such an old CPU, and it's because I still get PM's about how to OC them, they are still viable for gaming as long as you don't expect the world from them, there are still plenty of "Good" agp cards out there (ATI 9700PRo and up, and NVIDIA 5900Ultra and up) that can be found cheaply to build a second rig to have on hand for when a friends stops by for some light to medium duty gaming..I have a buddy that uses his to play BF-2, and it does a half decent job as long as you keep the details and resolution within reason! (IF you allready have a rig, and want to get a bit more life from it, ATI has some X-Series cards out, and NVIDIA has 6 and seven series cards in AGP form, there still must be demand for them, because they have not stopped releasing them on a somewhat limited basis!)

I personally get a kick out of OC'ing old hardware, I cut my teeth on the Athlon XP, so it holds special place in my heart...and if you are "Nastolgic" like me, the parts are still plentifull and dirt cheap these days..if you know where to look! New Egg still has some new CPU's and Motherboards in stock (Ebay or "Trader" sections in Forums are another good source) and some if it can still be found new or reconditioned if you look around the net at smaller sites...just check reseller ratings and don't "Overpay" since some of the places want as much for it today as they did when it first came out!

Enjoy!

it is a barton amd 3200+ already operating stock at 2267mhz with the 512 kb l2 cache and yes i will post my progress
thanks for letting me know to scale up slowly i origionally just set the peramiters to the low end of the numbers you quoted

um im not familiar with Super Pi 1MB, OCCT, Prime 95, or Folding @Home im a little too noob to oc for those refrences.

as far as parts go the ASUS A7V880 mobo is designed for oc it even has (probably cheesy) a built oc utility
my psu is a 500 w ultra x-connect (1st gen) the ram is however corsair value select with aftermarket alumiinum heat spreaders attached (i dont know how well the ram can handle extra voltage)

(personally if i won a dell or emachine desktop i would sell it and use the money to build a real computer {if i won a laptop i would give it to my wife, she realy doesnt use her pc for much anyway}

prebuilts suck unless you have the cash to fork out for something from a company that uses quality parts like voodoo pc or alienware (Ibuypower and cyberpower pc are upencomers that hit a good price point with decent quality parts so if you cant build your own id probably go with them)

all my files are on origional disks or already backed up on cd (although when i set up the perameters you listed even though the os wouldnt boot it didnt effect the data on my hdd when i reset them to stock values)

i do have a relativley fresh install of the os (10/20/06)and some essential drivers (all updated as of 10/24/06 i wanted to have a fresh setup for the oc with only what i needed so as not to slow down or show faulty speeds)

as far as cooling goes im using an xdream 2 from cooler master and with a stock setup it has kept the cpu under 35c under full load (using dual monitor at 1280x1024 on each running wow, cd ripping to mp3, mp3 playback, watching south park {real player} and watching tech tv from my tuner card {low res 600x480} the only problem i had was that some of the cd tracks i ripped were skipping or stalling because of incomplete burn info since then i havent run more that 3 functions at a time {safer that way} but thats probably just considered midrange

I have never heard of "clock gen" or "sys tool" (noob to oc remember)

as far as boards go i know abit makes good boards and ive been happy with what ive used from asus
gigabyte has some good ones but a lot of duds, and ive never had any experience with dfi they seem flashy and expensive (im a budget guy) and may be beter for oc'ing but ive never oc'ed before and until now had no intentions of doing so. and as for shuttle i dont know a single person who uses a shuttle board

I think that may be my problem (later build date on the cpu it was built in late 03 or early 04 and thats pretty late for the atlon xp series while it is a barton core and shows stock speed at 2267mhz {nearly 2.3 ghz already} the cpu multiplier may be locked so ill check out changing the fsb

how do i change the ram devider? if it helps ill post what is seen on my bios screen pertaining to ram

ok avoid half multipliers

i recently upgraded gpu to the sapphire x800gto to play oblivion (my previous 9800se from power color
256mb 128bitpath standard ddr memory did unlock when flashed {i had help from a friend in college}
to a 9800pro which unlocked 4 pixel pipelines and bumped up the core/mem clock speeds but the bitpath stayed the same and no way to get around standard ddr so performance from it was not verry good for Oblivion)
which was a big upgrade because now i can play at the max res my monitor supports (i like to use max res for games 1600x1200) and at high quality settings (although i do have to set the scale down to 2/3 for distance and 1/3 for grass regaurdless of whether i use 1600x1200 or 1280x 1024) with smooth frame rates {never tested my frame rates or benchmark scores} my main reason for oc'ing is to eek out enough performance to fully max out Oblivion and still get playable framerates.

the only thing i may add to this pc is another 2x512 of dual channel pc3200 memory but it seems that the price for that has actually increased since i bought mine

ill post updates on my progress for the oc project and may get this rig benchmarked