Overclocking...worth it?

[juan123]

I read that a 6200 that runs at 75mhz can be overclocked to 80mhz easily......I'm just wondering, is the speedup worth the work of working with soldering stuff or not? Currently the machine has 64mb RAM and OS 9.1.... well thanks a ton!

 

[Byrd]

Not worth it; finding the correct replacement crystal is always a pain, and the 6200 is a dog as it is I'm afraid

JB

 

[QuadSix50]

The best you could probably do is get a 6360 logic board and PSU and put it into the 6200's case. They should be the same size.

 

[Charlieman]

Most processor families do not overclock very well, including early generations of PPC. The later G3 is clockable -- 20% in terms of MHz if you are prepared to add extra cooling. But whatever your processor, get all of the "cheap" speed elsewhere before you overclock.

"Cheap" speed: Have you provided enough RAM for the apps that you wish to run? If you have enough physical RAM, did you disable Virtual Memory? What is the fastest hard disk option? On-board SCSI or PCI ATA? Will Speed Doubler accelerate any 68K legacy code? Surely the fast sensible (2D) video card?

 

[MacMan]

It sounds like this machine already has the maximum RAM, ie. 64MB. n overclock from 75 to 80MHz would make barely any noticable difference and would be more trouble than it's worth. If you wish to squeeze more power out of this machine I would suggest a motherboard from a later 6xxx series, as already suggested.

Despite the popularity of the 6200 in the past, it did have quite a few technical problems largely surrounding the fact that th motherboard was basically a re-used 630 motherboard. This meant the processor couldn't perform to it's full potential, effectively cutting it's performance in half. This issue was eventually resolved in the 6360.

 

[Maccess]

Aside from the 6200s design issues, overclocking older motherboards tened to lead to their earlier demise. It's not so much the processor, which simply shuts down whenn excessively overclocked, but the capacitors on the board which leak before their time (actually most of thsoe macs are already past their time, at least in design terms. They should have died from leaky caps a long time ago).