Strategy

The Pentium II 300 MHz offers moderate overclocking potential for those lucky enough to possess a model that is not multiplier locked. Reports have varied over the years since this Klamath model was introduced, but it appears that some units did ship with multiplier-locked cores. Overclocking potential for locked Klamath 300-MHz processors will be limited; increasing the front-side bus beyond 75 MHz is nearly impossible. A front-side bus speed of 83 MHz will result in a core rate of approximately 374 MHz (83 MHz □ 4.5), a speed often beyond the capability of the .28-micron Klamath core.

Owners of unlocked Pentium II Klamath 300 processors may benefit if an 83 MHz front-side bus speed is supported by the system's motherboard. Increasing the front-side bus rate to 83 MHz, while decreasing the processor multiplier value to 4.0×, often yields a stable 333 MHz. The increase in frontside bus speed will boost performance significantly: memory and PCI bus rates will also be overclocked. The half-speed Level 2 cache architecture of the P2 limits bandwidth between the processor and memory subsystems. Therefore, additional bandwidth obtained by overclocking the front-side bus can greatly improve memory performance.