Celeron 300A: The best CPU you could buy in 1998!

[@jamesrdgrs]

It was always a great feeling when you won the "Overclock Lottery". I love seeing how far you can push hardware.

[@mentalplayground]

I was lucky one in that lottery back in a day.

[@mish1195]

I had a really good GTX 1050 model that could overclock stupidly high. I was getting performance better than a 1050ti

[@MrGoneja]

Best one I won was a k6-3+ 450 that ran at 740mhz

[@CoolTI-Daniel]

I was unlucky, my CeleronA 300 was only stabled at 375. Which was fine, I upgraded often.

[@KaldekBoch]

I've won that lottery on my Ryzen 7 5800X3D. I lost the lottery on my previous Ryzen 5 5600X, which needs one of the cores to be boosted +5 on the PBO optimizer.

[@Shmbler]

My friend upgraded first in 1998 to a cheap 440LX board with a Celeron 266. Just a couple months later I followed with a 440BX board and a 300A@450 for roughly the same price. Imagine how not happy he was. Not happy at all.

[@bitsundbolts]

Smart and lucky! Congratulations!

[@jm036]

Waitchads stay winning.

[@soldiersvejk2053]

I remember reading an article back in 2004(gosh, that’s 20 years ago!) about using a converter to put a Tulatin Celeron on a 440BX board.

[@Zerbey]

Back in 1998 I was pricing up a Pentium II 450 machine, and the local computer shop said to me "I don't want to sell you that". He recommended a 300A at the much cheaper price and promised I could run it at 450. Used that PC for years, and it was absolutely rock solid, and yes I played Unreal Tournament on it too!

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow! Nice to have someone recommending something reasonable to you despite the fact that their commission would have probably been higher selling a PII 450!

[@kyorin6526]

Still playing Unreal Tournament regularly even now.

[@FusionC6]

@@kyorin6526 same. i play these days on a 1.1ghz p3 with a radeon ddr 64mb and 384mb ram + soundblaster live!

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Awesome CPU! Back then we read about the CeleronA capabilities in a PC mag and my brother bought one. It worked and we couldn't believe getting P2 performance for a bargain. Great times! Btw. UT99 was my absolute favourite shooter, soooo much fun!

[@bitsundbolts]

Good that your Celeron managed to work at 450 MHz!

[@JamieBainbridge]

I worked in a PC shop when these were new. The owner liked a game running in the window overnight as advertising. 4:55pm one day I didn't have a demo machine. I banged a CPU into a motherboard and started a game. The next morning I arrived and moved the mouse and the system bluescreened. Getting it on the bench, I realised I'd put a Celeron 300 in a board set to 4.5x 100MHz. Legendary CPU.

[@bitsundbolts]

Haha, nice! You're right! What a CPU those Celerons were!

[@mrhassell01]

Me too! I worked in 3 computer stores in South London around that time. Was a good time and (nearly) the last time, I worked in computer hardware.

[@JohnVance]

Hell yes, same here, exact same timeframe. I really think of it as "the good times" but that might just be because I'm 40 and everyone thinks of their 20s as "the good times" lol

[@JamieBainbridge]

@@JohnVance I have the exact same thought regularly. I wonder if everyone else who came before us has had the same thoughts about their 20s.

[@nicholas-k8j]

me too was doing work experience in 1998 at a computer shop.... i can remember people coming in and complaining about the new Ultima game ultima 8 peagon or something that it needed a super computer to run , Pentium 2 266 min for 1998 min game requirements was insane at the time and it was jerky at that.... people were buying all these add on graphics and we had so many people complain about drivers and threatening the shop as there were no refunds when the 3d didnt work.... seeing reviews now the customers were right and 3d was sooo buggy then. i remember the CYRIX MX chip cpu was still selling alright but on its last days.

[@mentalplayground]

300Mhz @ 450Mhz those were the days.

[@bitsundbolts]

Once in a while there are these gems!

[@speedyboishan87]

Yes also 800Mhz then 1.0ghz, Then came Hyperthreading CPU's Pentium 4, in 2003/4 they were expensive. The Celerons sold out more since Pentium 4 CPU's and Desktop PC's were expensive, Intel Celeron was ideal for those on a budget and those that do not require a 3D Accelerated Graphics card with 128MB, 256MB RAM for playing video games. etc.

[@gamingballsgaming]

​@@speedyboishan87 "🤖"

[@Dee_Just_Dee]

They were interesting times. Heatsinks weren't even necessary, and liquid cooling was seen as absolute showboating.

[@CheezeCracker]

300A @ 450 daily, 504 was 99% stable. Cooler days/AC on helped 😂 558* in winter with PC case sitting next to sliding glass door.. Enough stability for benchmarks but that's about it, if that. *swear this was 576 but math doesn't add up after downloading Abit mobo manual.

[@Leeki85]

That 450 MHz OC was much important than a lot of people realize. It was better for gaming, but the biggest difference was with DivX playback. 450 MHz was just above the threshold of decoding 480p at 24 FPS, at which most pirated movies were distributed. 450 MHz was also fast enough to handle late 90's internet workflow with browser, communicator and WinAmp playing your favorite pirated MP3. In Europe such CPU was also fast enough to brute force decode analog Canal+ encryption. All you needed is an analog TV card for your PC. Such encryption was done by permutating (mixing order) of horizontal scanlines. Computers were able to decode it, by analyzing static TV logo and finding the correct permutation for each frame. Canal+ soon reduced its logo to small "+" to make decoding harder, but CPUs got 1+ GHz soon anyway.

[@RambozoClown]

I had a dual slot one that had a pair of Celerons at 450 MHz. It ran as a server running 24x7 at near 100% load for years.

[@HomeofVSmile]

Great memories! Back then I got a Celeron 366 (with Slotket) and an Abit BX6 Rev. 2.0. I overclocked it (with slight overvolting of 0.1V via BIOS (Abit was really nice!)) to 550 MHz and had a blast! Just magic times for gamers on a budget.

[@bitsundbolts]

Nice! I had not much experience with overclocking back then - I was scared to damage something which I then had to explain to my parents.

[@UncleKennybobs]

I forgot how much I love Unreal Tournament.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

Back in the day, I had a 300A and an Abit BH6 motherboard. This combo was amazing ^^

[@TheLionAndTheLamb777]

I had a BH6 and ended up with a Pentium II 450 because I got one REALLY cheap along with some memory.

[@Choralone422]

Back in those days I had a Celeron 300A installed in a Abit BH6 mainboard. It ran for years at 464 MHz (103 MHz FSB) with the stock heatsink. Those were good times! I was in my 2nd year as an IT pro back then working for a large repair PC depot who serviced many of the big OEMs of the time. Going back to the early socket 7 days both Intel and AMD were in a race to integrate the L2 into the CPU die as they both saw the diminishing returns L2 cache located on the MB physically and electrically far away from the CPU. The MB L2 could not be clock high enough in order to keep the CPU fed with data as clock speeds increased. Intel had tried to integrate the L2 into the same package (but not into the CPU die itself) as the CPU die with the Pentium Pro, but had horrible yields, reportedly as low as 20%, which contributed to that CPUs high price. That's one big reason why Intel positioned the Pentium Pro in the workstation/server market which would more easily accept the higher price. Intel's stop-gap solution was the slot 1 package where the L2 could be located on the same card as the CPU. Since the L2 was physically and electrically closer to the CPU (than it would be on a MB) it could be clocked much higher, but still not at full CPU speed. The initial Covington Celeron CPU was also a stop-gap solution to offer a lower cost slot 1 option as AMD was putting a lot of pressure on Intel in the lower end of the market. Big OEMs like Compaq and HP started selling lower cost PCs with the K6 and K6-2 CPUs which Intel did not like! Upon it's release Intel did not anticipate the amount of negative press the Covington Celeron CPUs generated due to the missing L2 and the huge blow to performance it caused. Intel also didn't anticipate users finding out how massively overclockable many of the Mendocino Celerons ended up being or that the full speed L2 plus a higher FSB speed would match the much more expensive Pentium 2. Once Intel could manufacture CPUs with L2 in the CPU die they abandoned the slot 1 format for socket 370. AMD also worked to integrate the L2 into the CPU die with the later K6-2+ and K6-3 CPUs and had lots of issues with low yields. That's one big reason why the initial Athlon CPUs used the Slot A package where the L2 cache was located on the same card as the CPU and run at a fraction of the full CPU speed. Just like Intel, once AMD was able to integrate the L2 into the CPU die reliably they abandoned Slot A for Socket A. Later on I had a socket 370 Celeron 566 MHz with the Coppermine-128 core which was also an overclocking beast. It had a 8.5X multiplier and was meant to run at a 66 MHz FSB but mine happily ran for 8.5 x 103 for 875 MHz in Asus P3V4X mainboard in a slotket adapter. But even at that massively OC'd speed that CPU could barely keep up with a P3 800 MHz E model which used a 100 MHz FSB and would soundly lose to a P3 800 MHz EB model which used the 133 MHz FSB. Luckily I was able to win an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU + mainboard combo at a pop-up AMD roadshow event in Chicago, IL at the launch of that CPU in October 2001. I ended up switching to AMD through the rest of the Socket A platform's life. But that's a story for another time or video. :)

[@bitsundbolts]

Thank you for your extensive comment and for all this information! You were lucky to win that combo from AMD. The timeline and details you provide are correct based on my understanding and summarise the story how we went from motherboard level 2 cache to integrated level 2 cache in CPU dies. And then the change from socket to slot and then back to sockets again. 🙏

[@Choralone422]

@@bitsundbolts You're welcome! I can still remember going to that AMD event. During the launch of the Athlon XP CPUs AMD marketing held a number of pop-up events in several major cities in the US. The date and location for each event only being announced a little less than 24 hours in advance. For the Chicago event I, my then current, now ex-wife and my sister attended was held at what was the north side parking lot of the now demolished Brickyard Mall in Chicago. Registration for the event started at 6am as the event itself was scheduled from 7-9am on a weekday morning. In order to attend we ended up driving about 3 hours to Chicago in the middle of the night and had to stand outside the entire time on a fairly cold October morning. At registration you were given a ticket which was needed in order to claim prizes and only around 2000 tickets were available in all. In the end I was one of 200 lucky people who won a boxed Athlon XP 1800+ (which was the flagship CPU at the time) and a MSI KT266 Pro mainboard. My sister won an AMD t-shirt and my now ex-wife didn't win anything. That MSI board wasn't anything too special, there was no overclocking of any kind on it. The VIA KT266 chipset that MSI board used was quickly replaced with the much more popular KT266A chipset as there was an issue with USB 2.0 on the initial KT266 chipset. Due to this the fastest CPU that MSI board I had supported was the Athlon XP 1800+ and only the initial Palomino core Athlon XPs. Later Thoroughbred and Barton/Thorton core chips wouldn't POST with any publicly available BIOS at the time.

[@tony359]

My first PC was a 386DX 25 with no cache. A friend had the 33 MHz with cache and the difference was massive!!!

[@bitsundbolts]

I just remember the stories from my friends. They all said bad things about the Celeron - even when it got 128 KBs of level 2 cache. It's funny how cache makes such a big difference - at least between having NO cache and having a little bit of cache.

[@boardernut]

not really, the difference between cache and no-cache in a 386 or 486 is about 10% of performance improvement, not bad but not massive.

[@jimbotron70]

Even with Amiga's 68000s the difference was massive if cache was disabled at startup.

[@iansrven3023]

@@bitsundbolts still matters today, look at AMD X3D chips

[@nicholas-k8j]

no it had cache im sure... i had a 386 sx33 in xmas 1992 and it didnt have a math co-processor, your probably thinking about that , that was on the DX chip and probably made a big diff... i know doom 2 on the 386 wasnt really playable but on the 486 dx4100 it ran fine

[@Bunker278]

The arrival of the Socket 370 Celerons was perfect. Abit releasing their BP6 motherboard with dual CPU support was life-changing for my 3D graphics work. It took a while to find a pair of 366MHz Celerons that would reliably run at 550MHz while keeping the stock voltage. I could run all-day render jobs without a single hiccup. That machine was a beast. I maxed the RAM out to 768MB using three PC-133 256MB sticks while dropping CAS latency down to 2 since I was basically underclocking the RAM. Having that much RAM saved a lot of time in an era where hard drives were so slow.

[@bitsundbolts]

I wish I would have known so much back then. You definitely got a huge boost and I am sure you enjoyed working with that system!

[@nicholas-k8j]

for 1998 or 1999 that computer would of been a beast ... i had one of the cheaper computers new in 1999 a celeron 433 with 64 ram and that was a huge upgrade over my 486 with win 95.

[@nicholas-k8j]

hard drives were not that slow i mean 1999 they were close to peaking the tech on the IDE mechanical drive ... they were far faster then the early 90s and you still had a 30 meg second transfer speed then that was lighting quick at the time , a quad cdrom drive was only 600 kbps for comparison

[@s26me]

I really miss those old times were CPUs were actually interesting.

[@FusionC6]

yup its why i have a bunch of stuff from that era still to tinker with

[@the_kombinator]

They're no longer interesting to you because you're an adult now ;)

[@PuOop-j9l]

​@@the_kombinator it's no longer interesting because to draw out a 10% increase in performance (basically useless and you can't tell the difference) you tinker for days, double your power draw and then you go back to default because it's not worth it. Now imagine buying an a64 running at 1.8ghz and overclocking it to 2.8ghz. It's like buying the cheapest of intel i3 today and having it perform as an i9 14900k. that is what tinkering could get you back then and what made it interesting.

[@the_kombinator]

@@PuOop-j9l Which is why my modern computer is like my daily driver - an appliance. I mess with my 4G63 Weber fed 40 year old Hyundai for the weekends, and I keep opening my 386 DX/33 machine and experiment on it.

[@egmccann]

What, you don't find self-destructing CPUs interesting? :D

[@NielsHeusinkveld]

This was when Grand Prix Legends came out, a leap forward for race simulation physics, bringing Pentium 1 chips to its knees. You would still end up on fire, upside down, somewhere in a tree with an overclocked Celeron 300A, but you would do so at higher frame rates.

[@BenBarium]

Exactly 🙂

[@Jimfowler82]

What a game. The sound! Jesus how poor are these f1 games now compared to how advanced they were 20 years ago!

[@IvoryTowerCollections]

I was using a 300a running @ 450 for sevearl years until I finally upgraded to my P4 Northwood. It was one of my favorite PC builds I've done and owned. It was a gaming beast on a budget back then as you stated.

[@ctiborkoza8944]

when I built a PC on an intel platform with a CeleronA more than 90 percent of the CPU went stable at 450Mhz, even on the new Socket 370 platform I was successful and everything worked without a problem

[@СергейД-ч4ь]

It was my 2nd PC. Had bought it in November 1998 and have been using until summer 2003 ! :) Really great CPU!!!! I played Quake3, Blood2, Half Life, Age of Empires 2.

[@theformerkaiser9391]

The pins on that Cyrix MII sent a chill through my whole body

[@bitsundbolts]

I'll try to fix that one day!

[@emmanuelgaille3523]

back in september 1998 (if i remember well), i had purchased the Abit BH6 packed with the Celeron 300A clocked at 450mhz (some sellers in Paris were offering such a pre-tested bundle) paired with the Voodoo Banshee AGP. It was an incredible beast !

[@bitsundbolts]

I've heard that computer shops caught on the Celeron 300A quickly and sold them pre-tested (probably at a small premium).

[@mo0seboy]

My bro had a 300A. He won the silicon lottery and it overclocked no problem.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

Interesting video. The Celeron Covington was also an overclocking monster, the 266 mhz version could overclock to 400 mhz (4x100) and the 300 mhz one to 450 mhz (4.5x100).

[@SobieRobie]

Most of 266s were able to do 4x112 :)

[@bitsundbolts]

I tried to get mine at 450 - it wouldn't POST. Dashes on the POST card. I guess it wouldn't be stable even at 2.3 volts.

[@monotoneone]

You needed the right stepping. I think it was SL2QG. Mine ran 448 Mhz (4x112) at 1.9v. Also it was quite fast in Quake 2 (faster than the P2 400Mhz).

[@MikkoHiiri]

At the time I was planning on upgrading my Pentium MMX 166, first to the market came AMD K6-2 and then Celeron 300A, I went with the Celeron and was very happy with it even though my sample was not completely stable at 450MHz with my Abit motherboard. Drove it at ~370MHz and sometimes at 450. It was oh so close, friend of mine had a completely stable model at 450MHz. Thank you for the video!

[@Finnisher_DAD]

Yeah had one of these and it ran flawlessly at 450 MHz its entire life. I was amazed that a CPU could overclock that much and it felt like additional extra upgrade since the Celeron system replaced a P150 system

[@adcraziness1501]

I had one of these! It felt so amazing to get it overclocked and STABLE! Such a cool processor.

[@mitch075fr]

I had one of those. It could overclock to 450 easily on an Abit BH6 1.01, with a slight undervolt (1.9V instead of 2.0). The mobo had a "turbo" feature that could add 2.5 MHz to the FSB, clocking the CPU at 462 MHz... But it was slightly unstable, so I kept it at 450 with a "fat" P-III cooler. My brother had the same setup, but his could run at 1.7V - too bad he didn't try to push it further, because that was really a golden sample ! Before I had gotten the cooler, I would instead run it with a 83 MHz FSB and a 1:1 AGP bus speed, that was a nice compromise : "AGP 2.7" and a 375 MHz Pentium II did net me some nice benchmark numbers on the Unreal castle flyby demo, all that on a rock solid system. Getting that extra cooling and cranking it up all to the max was still better, though./

[@sergeleon1163]

This brings back some memories, me and some friends had this CPU and we all overclocked it, mine ran 504Mhz on air cooling (112MHz fsb) but my friends brother toyed around with water cooling and peltiers and managed to get 600Mhz on theirs.

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow. That's double the speed! Quite an accomplishment! That must have been a total chart topper!

[@Alex.Adametz]

It was April 1999, when my friend and I went to a local computer hardware store to buy those Celeron 300A. We've even persuaded the store manager to quick test CPUs for overclocking!! (because we told him we're going to buy 2 CPUs, not only 1). Tests were successful for the first two random CPUs from their store and we happily went home for building our PCs. We used 300A with Acorp 6ZX86 (i440ZX, AGP+PCI+ISA, Slot1, BabyAT format). Than MB was able to supply even more than 100 MHz. The CPU tested ok at 105@4.5, but I used it at 100 MHz for stability. The CPU served me flawlessly for 1,5 years and was upgraded to Celeron 600 (Coppermine) with the same 50% overclock. Those were fun times!

[@brunocracco2949]

I bought a Celeron 300A in 1998, with Asus P2 Mono and was successful at running it at 100x4,5 with no issues. I was so happy at that time to have a CPU that was as fast as the inaccessible PII 450, for a fraction of the price and full speed cache. It was my best ever CPU move ! I still have it in my retro computing collection. Thank you very much for this very good video about one of my best overclocking experience (proportionally of course).

[@bitsundbolts]

Glad you liked the video! I wish I had bought a Celeron back then.

[@BurleyBoar]

Yes, I had a celeron 300a in socket 370. I got a ABit BP6 and had two 450MHz processors. Ran linux and loved every moment of it... even if I never did use them hard enough to cause the BP6 issues (one incorrect capacitor supplying the CPUs if I recall correctly.) In 1999 I didn't know anyone who did not get 450 out of their 300a. Sample size of about 5 people I knew who got one in 1999.

[@bitsundbolts]

Nice! Haha, maybe my stubborn 300A that doesn't want to run at 450 MHz is quite rare 😅

[@barrozo24]

on the benchmarks you could have add k6-2 just for comparison, again great video!!! we are still waiting for a "behind the scenes" video

[@bitsundbolts]

Good idea. It could be a comparison of similar spec'd CPUs for socket 7 and slot 1 - budget CPUs. I didn't have enough time for this project to set up and test on a different platform. But it's an interesting idea and I'll see when I can get to this. Ah, a behind the scenes video - another project 😁. I'll see when I can make such a video.

[@maggiejetson7904]

Had one back then, what a great bargain and a blast! Thanks for the memory.

[@vk3fbab]

Brings back memories. I was sitting in this year digital electronics lectures and we covered how increased gate voltages could allow the gates to shut faster. This was before i knew about overclocking. So i went and applied this to my AMD K6. It was indeed true. I also managed to use my motherboard as a flash memory programmer. By copying ROMs to RAM you can remove your BIOS chip from the motherboard while it's running. Then insert another chip into the motherboard and flash it. Just what you need when you got a virus that reprogrammed your BIOS. Who says my education was wasted.

[@bitsundbolts]

Ahh - hot-swapping BIOS chips. There is a video on my channel where I do exactly that!

[@starbuck1776]

I built a system in 1998 with a 300a overclocked to 450 mHz and 2 Voodoo 2's in sli, as a college graduation present to myself. Still have the 300a and the Voodoo's. I might have to get a motherboard and rebuild it :)

[@dava00007]

What a legendary CPU, I had one back in the days and it was the best deal I ever had on a CPU (Except for the 7950x currently in my system that I got the the equivalent of 350$US.... But buying a low end CPU and getting it to run as well as the one in my roommate's PC for a fraction of the price was just amazing!

[@MicrophonicFool]

I had a dual MB with 2 @ 450. It ran my AudioWarez for many years. Tweaked it one day for 400ish and the FSB speed was just enough weird to immediately wipe the SCSI drives I had connected. IDE was not affected in the same way. Went back to 450 and was able to confirm my backups were actually viable.

[@bitsundbolts]

Good you had backups!

[@thestoneworks]

My bud and I owned 300a's and we knew all about the overclocking. Building a cpu cooler for it was half the fun! Man, it was the real start of overclocking. It was so exciting, so edgy and cool. No one today will ever know the fun we had back then. It's just not the same.

[@B4s3MXxD]

I still remember reading the Tom's Hardware article (written by Dr. Thomas "Tom" Pabst) revealing the overclocking secret of the Celeron 300A. Word spread fast amongst the geek community and I remember searching nearby stores for Celeron 300As with specific manufacturing dates, the ones reported most likely to overclock. They were indeed fun times. You could feel the effect of the overclock without having to benchmark. There would never be another overclock like it. There were people who were running dual Celeron 300As at 450 MHz running Windows NT 4.0 on ABIT BE6 motherboards. Fun times!

[@l3p3rM355i4h]

The Celeron 300A at 450 was my first big overclocking PC too, but I think CPUs like the mobile Barton 2500+, which could go from 1.67GHz to 2.5GHz+ with the right motherboard and memory, or the Winchester Athlon 64s that could go from 1.8 to 2.7GHz were the equal in terms of giving you world class performance from a very cheap CPU

[@GGigabiteM]

>There would never be another overclock like it. Except for Core 2 Duo and Quad parts. The E/Q6600 chips were good overclockers and getting +1000 MHz was easy. People were pushing those things close to 4 GHz from a base clock of 2.4 GHz. The later Pentium Dual-Core parts were even better overclockers, being based on cut down Wolfdale cores. If you got something like an E5200, which had a bus speed of 800 MHz, you could crank it up to 1333 MHz and get 4160 MHz. Going to a 1600 MHz FSB required a later motherboard, extra voltage and some silicon lottery luck.

[@dougmathews4480]

@@GGigabiteM Some Versions of the Pentium 3 overclocked very well too, my p3 600 was stable at 800 with just a FSB change back in the day.

[@sku_101]

@@l3p3rM355i4h my desktop cpu athlon xp2500 was barton. on my bios i can free pgrade to xp 3200 at no cost .. to 2200mhz!

[@RetroInside94]

Awesome! I really like your video, they bring me back at that time. Your tests about the Celeron Slot 1 models was just perfect! You simply summarized what surrounded those who owned this CPU

[@bitsundbolts]

Glad you enjoyed the video! Thanks for watching.

[@drakelangham4412]

Ah, Mendocino. I fondly recall getting two of the later Socket 370 Celerons and dropping them into the good old Abit BP6, and OCing both of them to 550MHz. Had to replace a VRM on the motherboard that was under spec, but after that, it ran like a dream on NT 4.0. Fantastic for 3D rendering.

[@alexander_mejia]

All of us who played at quake tournaments had these setups. Usually a little extra voltage was enough to get it to 450mhz. Because we were able to essentially grab the top tier gaming performance, those machines lasted us until the AMD Athlon came out years later which was another superior boost in speeds.

[@hellcoreproductions]

We used dual S370 version machines for a bunch of game servers and proxies in our gaming cafe back then, total units.

[@Stinktierchen]

I bought that same CPU back then and overclocked it too. Amazing CPU for that price at that time. 2 other friends did the same. We were the overclocking kings of the school :D

[@vasilioskotetsos7557]

I had celeron 300A back in the day on bx440 board. It was doing 450Mhz without a problem. I replaced it with a P3 running at 450Mhz ,then i bought a slot 1 adapter card using a 800Mhz P3.

[@SpeedIng80]

I had one, running 450MHz without any issue. I think I tried even 500MHz with even more FSB, but that was not 100% stable. It was a great time, having such a beast for a bargain.

[@CheezeCracker]

Yep, 504Mhz was an option (112x4.5) . Stable enough for night time gaming (cold nights)

[@seeindarkness]

I remember at the time HardOCP were reviewing the Celeron 300A and were very surprised how it overclocked

[@theALFEST]

Overclocked mine to 504, great times! Two years later upgraded to celeron 850@1133

[@thombone]

I absolutely did own a few of these and they overclocked like a dream.

[@dabombinablemi6188]

Due to how stable mine is, I've cut contact B21 and always run it at 450MHz - already having an aftermarket cooler helped. I lean towards using my Celeron 500 most of the time however has performance is indistinguishable (on SE440BX-2 however so really good board), and it is one of two CPU that I own which do not get divide errors in some older games.

[@bitsundbolts]

Nice! For those who are interested in the details: Cutting or covering contact B21 will run the CPU at 100 MHz FSB - the same what could be done on the P2B with the jumper as shown in this video (07:07)

[@dabombinablemi6188]

@@bitsundbolts I did the same for my (then) second Celeron 333. I'll need to use the voltmod on it however as it has a high chance of crashing under load (can't quite get a full Cinebench 2003 run out of it).

[@rustybobdotca]

I got my Celeron 300A up to 464MHz at stock voltage. That chip was a beast at the time. Lasted a couple years before I upgraded to a 750MHz Athlon, and eventually a 1GHz Athlon.

[@ianide2480]

I had an Abit BH6 in '98 with a Celeron 300a. I won the silicone lottery and was able to overclock to 450mhz on my first try without changing voltage. I ran it, day 1, overclocked the entire time that I owned with zero issues. Was a great time to own a PC =)

[@Constantin314]

that mod was so cool! it reminded me that some Athlon XPs could be OCed by uniting 2 pins with a small thin wire. great video, BuB!

[@SzymekCRX]

Or a pencil 😀

[@nalinux]

And modified as MP too, for dual cpu :)

[@bitsundbolts]

Thank you! Yeah, that mod was something different this time - just tape 😊

[@Jimfowler82]

I did the pencil mod. 🤣

[@Hubris2]

@@nalinux I used a rear-window defogger kit to draw connections and change a pair of AthlonXP into MP and to overclock.

[@utubeuser1024]

I won the overclock lottery in July 2003 - I bought a Celeron Northwood 2.4GHz - and had a board capable of running 100 or 133 MHz with correct PCI/RAM dividers automatically - the CPU posted and ran happily at 3.2GHz (24x133MHz) for over 6 years before I retired it ;) At the time the P4 3.06GHz with HT was about A$1299 while I picked up the Celeron 2.4GHz for A$129 (SL6XG was t he s-Step). Great times :D

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow! What a great overclocker and value for money! I always wanted the best back in the day, but now, I would prefer going the smart route and get value for money!

[@utubeuser1024]

I​@@bitsundboltsI later found a board with voltage adjustment and it was stable at 3.2GHz down to 1.392v (stock voltage 1.525v) and ran at its stock clock down to 1.04v :D

[@pcfan1986]

I had the 333 Version and overclocked it to 417 MHz. Worked perfectly.

[@griff5476]

Lovely walk down memory lane. Mid to late 90s was a PC tinkerers dream. Thanks 👍

[@darthbizkit]

Yep. That was a good time. Playing Quake 300a on Abit mother board Yada Yada Yada

[@TorRaswill]

Great video and legendary CPU. As many others have already alluded to, those were interesting and fun days for CPUs. Overclocking that actually mattered, pencils for multiplier unlocks and lots more fun to be had. Same with GPUs. Remember modding the ATi 9500 to a 9700 with some luck.

[@bitsundbolts]

It is one of the only mods I attempted back then since I was about older and started to tinker with my hardware: mod a Radeon 9500. Unfortunately, mine had non-working pixel pipelines. I don't know how many of the four dormant pipelines were defective, but I had black squares everywhere once I unlocked them using the driver mod.

[@centauri0]

Still using my 300a to this day in my win 98 dos pc. Still going strong at 450mhz as well.

[@stamasd8500]

That was the CPU I built my first computer with, back in 1998. Paired with an Abit BH6, and overclocked to 463MHz (103x4.5)

[@bitsundbolts]

Ah, exactly the board that is most of the time mentioned in combination with the Celeron 300A! You started building your own PCs with a great combo!

[@stamasd8500]

@@bitsundbolts Yeah. I did my research well at the time. Still have the CPU and motherboard, working great.

[@alexbinder]

I forgot about Abit, they had some good board back then.

[@CheezeCracker]

​@@alexbinderBE6v2 was my build, had a buddy that went the dual, BP6 route some time later

[@thomassmith4999]

In the #Celeron group on Efnet we all ran dual slot one 300As at 450 or 500mhz. There were hundreds of us running that setup at the time. Hugely popular.

[@vswitchzero]

Great video and a legendary CPU for sure! The Mendocino celerons were amazing chips and a great value. The coppermine models were too. I never owned a flagship CPU at all during the P2/P3 generations and only had Celerons . I had a pair of Celeron 300As in an Abit BP6 running at 450MHz for a while. Used that system as a server well into the Athlon XP years. I have a socket 370 version of the 300A that Overclocks exceptionally well. It’ll do 450MHz undervolted and is *mostly* stable at 600MHz 😁

[@bitsundbolts]

I somehow completely missed the great value back then! I guess I was in denial with my Pentium II 350. Those Celeron 300A served you well for a very long time!

[@TheEricDangerous]

Got 2 of them on a Abit BP6.

[@av_oid]

I did the same. Until the BP6 died from the capacitor plague.

[@andrewspode]

I'm sure i remember people using nail varnish to cover traces for this volt mod.

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow - that is more like a permanent mod. I guess nail polish remover could undo it, but I could also see the nail polish crack and fall off.

[@andrewspode]

@@bitsundbolts I think if the surface is clean it would be fine. What's more likely is if you keep taking it in/out it would rub away. But arguably the same can be said of the tape you used. The nail varnish is certainly quicker! I used to safely run 2.3v through my mendocinos but that had significant heat output! I would love to see you compare and overclock the Coppermine and Tualatin Celerons too. I feel their reputation is unfounded.

[@bitsundbolts]

I do need to look at Tualatin. I need to have a look at my TUSL2-C - that board might need some repairs. I guess I should also look at the Tualatin to Coppermine mod.

[@mont3011]

I had 2 300a running @450 on an Epox KP6BS Motherboard. I still have them, but the board is now sporting 2 PIIIs

[@rkupka]

I owned Celeron 566MHz which was easily overclocked to 800MHz. Also very impressive. It was my first PC.

[@ComicSanserif]

Yup, I had a 300A @ 450Mhz. Loved that CPU. Rock solid. It got replaced with an AMD Duron 600 @ 900Mhz (bridging some really small points with a pencil, very unstable, in hindsight probably Capacitor plague), a Pentium 4 @3Ghz from work, followed by a Core 2 Duo E8400 and now for almost 15 years already a Core I7-4790K @ 4Ghz or so. But I miss the time where simple tricks meant a huge overclock :)

[@ErazerPT]

Almost same, but Duron700>E7300>i3 2100 (2nd hand junk bin). But that made me "cursed" with the "price conscious" mindset, even now i don't have to anymore. So, i3-2100>1600AF which will be replaced this year with a 5600 as they are dirt cheap now, same price as the 1600AF when i bought it. But yeah, the days of mucking with some obscure utils and .ini files to push the fill rate of you "cheap as it gets" S3Trio64 were more fun. The days of connecting your Amiga to the PC via plip so they could share the cheappo winmodem connection to the internet, using a CD32 as a CDROM drive over a serial port connection, etc... Fun days. But I'm getting that mojo back with the ESP32. The amount of stuff you can push those cheap thingies to do is... ridiculous. Just finished turning one into a remotely controlled USB/Mouse, which I'll later morph into a "macro keyboard" as most of the offers on the market suck.

[@Bigbacon]

I rememver having a duron 533 or 566? That woukd OC to 1ghz....and it was still terrible.

[@ErazerPT]

@@Bigbacon Durons started at 600 so couldn't have been that, and a Celeron 533/366@1Ghz would have been within 15-20% of the equivalent P3 so, the only scenario were that "terrible" ever happened was using SDR PC66 with such loose timings that you you might as well not have OC'ed at all.

[@Bigbacon]

@@ErazerPT lol you are right. It was a celeron 533, in the slocket no less!

[@exidy-yt]

I was one of the lucky ones. Found out about this fantastic deal when I was working at Electronic Arts Canada from one of the tech services guys, and was already in the market for an upgrade from a Pentium 133 as I needed alot more power to play the upcoming MMORPG EverQuest, but as a new father, poor AF. I was able to score an Asus board and a fully overclockable Celeron 300A that ran at 450MHz right out of the gate. It was my go-to gaming rig for a LONG time.

[@koitsu2013]

God I miss Slot 1. Folks I know at Intel said it was the absolute worst and nightmarish architecture to design and actually get working (functionally), but I loved it. It was such a "user friendly" socket and made system installation etc. so much easier.

[@Renderman-Official]

I did buy a 300A as soon as it was available, increased the bus frequency to 100Mhz and enjoyed Pentium II 450 speeds at a much lower price! These were the days of great overclocking.

[@tdome3000]

I had one of those. Made the hardware mod with bridging those two transistors on the CPU board, or what they were, very simple, and it worked perfectly the whole time, for many years. It was a rocketship in games.

[@alexandreconfiant-latour2757]

Sill have mine today that. 25y later. Running at 450 with a pair of Voodoo2 Great video.

[@ajsnz]

I had a 300A overclocked to 450 on an Abit BH6 mothrboard and a Riva TNT2. It was the best bang for buck available in 1999. Nobody I knew ever had an issue running the 300A at 450.

[@pichonPoP]

this videos brings me good memories from my time with a pentium II 300Mhz that i increased its speed up to 450Mhz. This was on 2000 and remember so well that isolating a pin from the cpu was a really pain in the ass at that time.

[@cemsengul16]

I really dig the idea of a slot in processor like we do with GPUs today.

[@dennisp.2147]

That was my exact setup in 1998. A Mendocino 300A overclocked to 450 on an ASUS P2B motherboard. I still have it! It served me well until 2002, when I got an Athlon Thunderbird C 1400 on an ASUS A7V133 which I was also able to overclock nicely. I swapped the Thunderbird for a Athlon XP Thoroughbred 2400 which was the max the A7V133 motherboard would take sometime in early 2003. Again, a decent overclocker. I sold the A7V133 motherboard and Athlon 2400 processor on that 4 letter auction site for more money than I paid for them in 2006 and bought a Pentium D 805 and a JetWay 775GT1-LOGE. Which was a terrible mistake...

[@GadgetUK164]

I have one of these somewhere! It did rock and was better than the PII at the time!

[@GraveUypo]

maybe better value, but it wasn't better. the pentium also overclocked like crazy.

[@310McQueen]

I had a Celeron 300A. I also tried to overlock it, and I think it actually worked. At the time of their release, I worked near where these were made, for the company that made them. I worked in the factory that made the 440BX chipset. We made gazillions of them, because it was hard to find a better chipset to replace them.

[@tomtravers7127]

In 1998, I was rocking an AMD K6-III Multimedia CPU with MMX IPU and 3DNow! FPU, OPTi 82C929 ISA Audio with Sound Blaster Vibra 16 Emulation, Internal MIDI Synth expansion and onboard Yamaha OPL3. For GPU, I had the 6MB Hercules dual card. This was the days when 3D acceleration was done on a separate card from 2D video cars. The 2D display on the Hercules was an Micronics MX chipset and the 3D card was a 3Dfx Voodoo Rush all on the PCI interface. This was a really nice budget gaming PC back in the day!

[@AG-jj3lx]

So much nostalgia and fun to be had with the hardware back in the day :)

[@dataterminal]

Fun fact, the Intel L440GX motherboard supports the Celeron 300A... twice since it's a dual slot motherboard, and it runs them at 450MHz. It was a fun time.

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow - for that, I need to find another good 300A - and a motherboard with that chipset...

[@andreaspettersson79]

Think i had a tyan motherboard for dual celeron back in the day, need to run win nt4 or win 2000 for dual cpu support though

[@thomassmith4999]

@@bitsundbolts You need to drill through the back of the 300A to remove one pin from the CPU is order to run dual SMP mode. I still have both my modded slot one 300As so I could show you how.

[@emmanuelgaille3523]

@@bitsundbolts The Abit BP6 could also run two Celeron 300A in SMP, without any modification. Perfect rig under windows 2000 with a Voodoo Banshee 16Mb back in the days !

[@bitsundbolts]

I need to read about this mod. Was it required to drill? Taping a contact at the edge or cutting a trace somewhere wasn't working? I guess it was a connection right under the CPU that caused dual CPUs not to work.

[@riccarter4784]

The Pentium 2 slot A 350. Was a beast! I had that over lock to 700 with no problem. It never hung up or blue screen.

[@sammyfromsydney]

I ran a 300Mhz Celeron at 450MHz for years. Best CPU purchase ever.

[@doyouwtech9012]

Nice memory lane :) I remember selling hundreds of those CPU 300A on computers or for parts too. All Computers equiped with those CPU were already OC to 450MHz / 100MHz by me in the shop. Then installed Windows, drv, apps, etc. And voila another customer happyy to have saved lot of money. We didnt do that for companies or only a few that asked for it because of pro apps used at that moment that needed ultra stable PC and new SSE instruction or more cache. Funy thing is I dont remember any of those CPU / computer not booting at 450Mhz / 100MHz fsb. and not a single customer complaining about stability. Maybe we were lucky ? :) Anyway, good work as always sir !

[@bitsundbolts]

Uh, my Celeron must be an odd sample then. I should try it on different boards in the future, to see if it may be related to my P2B. Oh, and thanks for watching!

[@doyouwtech9012]

@@bitsundbolts pleasure is mine :) let us know about different MB. I remember we tried to stick to P2B or P2B variant (L, DLS, etc) or a bit cheaper but same result even OC : DFI P2XBL. I also had that exelent P2XBLD (dual CPU). for awhile working on NT4.0 and SETI app 24H :)

[@brunorodriguesmaso]

yes, pretty much all of them would run at 450Mhz without any voltage bump. it was a great CPU indeed

[@rageofheaven]

Amazing that in 1997, this 450mhz slot cpu was cutting edge. A decade later, quad core cpus existed.

[@The65c02]

I remember in the late 90's at the Computer market in the UK (Manchester), Celeron 300A's were sold based on their overclocking ability. The sellers would test the CPU right before your eyes so you could see exactly how it overclocked, they charged less than MSRP if the overclock failed or was poor, and they charged more than MSRP if it overclocked well. I had a 300A running at 450Mhz for 2 years (which was a long time in the late 90s as many people would upgrade twice per year or more).

[@timvanderbyl3077]

I was lucky enough to have a Socket 370 300A stepping SL36A. These were fantastic overclockers, 450mhz was easily attained. 522mhz was stable in most things for me, and I could even manage 600MHz in some applications for extended periods of time. I did have a friend with a P2 450 who really didn't believe it until he saw it!

[@timvanderbyl3077]

I should add I still have two of these 300A's from back then, and I just found another one online last month so I now have 3!

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow! That is a great overclock!

[@timvanderbyl3077]

​@@bitsundbolts keep an eye out for the SL36A stepping Malaysian built Mendocino, could be great content for a future video! I'd happily send you one but I'm in Australia, shipping might cost more than the processor!

[@alexp8946]

I had the BH6 and Celeron back then and it was awesome. Worked like a charm!

[@LatteLover]

I remember these 300A being all the hype back then with their ease of over clocking to ridiculous speeds

[@iansrven3023]

Thankfully i had one of those and did indeed use it at 450mhz, incredible value. Don't miss those jumpers though or irq settings

[@nzwedjat]

Around that exact time I needed to build a superfast multithreaded data processing machine. Brought the dual slot P2B (p4b?) and three C300's. I then did the SMP hack (drilling out pin's and doing a link or two on each cart). I ended up with a dual 450 and a spare 450, they all took 450. The machine flew and rock solid for years. On a few others I eventually brought I had to lift the core voltage a smidge on some. - great times!

[@jamesross3939]

I used to upgrade my pc about every 6 months during that time. I indeed upgraded motherboard/CPU to this combo. OC'd to 450 MHz . Pretty sure w/ 16Mb. It was rock solid. Most bang for the buck. Used it at least 6 months or more.

[@adonian]

I still have the cacheless one in an antistatic bag. I keep most of my old cpus as memories of my younger days 😂.

[@brunospfc8511]

I had a friend who used to brag about his "300A" with 128kb cache....it was a good CPU, i remember playing Mario 64 (project 64), good performance...good times....dial-up connection :(

[@jbrizz99]

I had two of the 333mhz versions of this. One of them was stable at 500mhz in my Asus P2B-VM. It was a beast of a machine.

[@blower1]

Back in the day i had a 300A running at ~520mhz, peltier and water cooled with a custom water block, rad and pond pump setup. Paired with a Voodoo 2 it was an awesome gaming setup, and Unreal Tournament was played a lot!

[@Thegonagle]

I had a Celeron 300 running at 450 for several years. It was so stable I never needed to worry about it. If it ever crashed, it wasn’t because of the overclock. I ran Windows 95, 98, NT 4, and 2000 Professional on it, sometimes with a month or more of uptime (especially on Windows 2000), just because I could. I later upgraded the CPU to a Celeron 566 (with slot-to-socket adaptor) and ran it at 850, IIRC (might have been a 533 at 800-it’s been a long time). In any case, it worked just as well as the 300 at 450 for as long as I had it (until I upgraded to Pentium 4). Good CPUs for cheap, those P2-based Celerons were.

[@gaborszucs8935]

Am i addicted to your videos if im auto-liking every single ones even before im actually watching them....? 😂

[@bitsundbolts]

Haha, I am not sure, but thank you so much for watching and liking :)

[@nikolakojic652]

Hi, can you make a video on Coppermine-128 based celerons in the future? They were also amazing overclockers. Back in the day I had Celeron 566 on MSI BX Master mobo (with adapter) and not only it easily did 850 MHz (50% OC), but I used it on 952 MHz for everyday use, it could boot non-stable at 1050 MHz, and I think it was stable at 1030 MHz or something with voltage boost. But as I said I used it everyday on 952 MHz with no voltage boost. Maybe you can make a video on some of these?

[@bitsundbolts]

I an still collecting a few models of Coppermine Celerons. I'll definitely make a few videos about Coppermine and Tualatin in the future since I have many boards to fix. I also need to cover the Tualatin mod for Slot 1.

[@JoseMiguelCastilloGarcia]

I didn’t have a Mendocino CPu but I fondly remember my P3 450 overclocked to 600 MHz with 512 MB of 133 MHz SDRAM. It was a 3D Studio beast 🎉