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Case Study: Abit BH6 & Celeron 300A
Final Reality Benchmarks

General Overview

The popular Abit BH6 and Celeron 300A combination is undoubtably one of the most sucessful overclocking combinations in history. This should come as no surprise given that the jumperless BIOS featured in the BH6 is highly overclocking friendly. Known more commonly as Softmenu 2, the BH6's jumperless BIOS allows the processor voltage to be manually adjusted in minute 0.05 or 0.1 intervals. The easy selection of a wide range of bus speeds from 66MHz up to 133MHz then adds the finishing touches in creating the ultimate overclockers' motherboard.

Manufactured using 0.25 micron technology, the Mendocino-based Celeron 300A compliments the Abit BH6 perfectly. Amid incredible overclocking success stories from well established hardware review sites, the original fears that the Celeron's 128Kb on-chip level 2 cache would not take well to overclocking quickly evapourated soon after its release. Ever since then, the incredible Celeron 300A has gone onwards and stolen the title of the "Overclocking King" from its cousin, the Deschutes- based Celeron 266.

Before we proceed, I would like to reiterate that it should be noted that the objective of synthetic benchmarking is to perform a series of test on a system and subsequently rate its performance based on the test results. Although these tests cannot be 100% accurate in representing real world performance, more often that not, they are useful as a rough indicator.

	Test Bed Disclosure Operating system: Windows 98 Build 4.10.1998 & DirectX 6.0 Benchmark programme: VNU Final Reality version 1.01 ATI Xpression+ driver version: 5.21-9CN-WEB Advanced Benchmark option used and sound disabled by default For accuracy, all benchmark tests were run 5 times Core voltage raised from 2.00V to 2.05V for stability in 100MHz FSB tests Core voltage raised from 2.05V to 2.20V for stability in 103MHz FSB tests
	Slot 1 Configuration Processor : Motherboard : Memory : 2D/3D card :	Intel Celeron^TM with MMX Technology (SL32A) Abit BH-6 i440BX SoftMenu 2 1x64Mb 10ns LGS SDRAM ATI Xpression+ 4MB (3D RageII+DVD) P/N 113-38806-101
	2D Benchmark Results

3D Benchmark Results

Final Reality is the intellectual property of VNU Business Publications Limited.

Discussion and Conclusion

At 464MHz, the Celeron 300A runs stable and shows a phenominal 54.7% increase in clockspeed. Running at 2.30V and a clockspeed of 504MHz allowed me to boot into Windows 98, but lockups and blue screens were too frequent for it to be of any practical use. However, a typical trait of overclocking is that mileage varies. Many enthusiasts have already reported on the Internet that their Celerons are crusing along at 504MHz with absolutely no problems. Another point to note here is that the heatsink/fan combination that comes pre-installed onto the Celeron's SEC cartridge is rather small and far from being robust. A larger heatsink and a fan with a high volumetric air flow rate will certainly do much to push the Celeron to new overclocking heights.

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Last modified on September 23, 1998