As you can guess I'm saying all this because I brought myself a card and took my original 500 right up to it's core limit of 650 (1.7volts) on 0.25micron. Instantly seeing massive speed increases and wiping the slate of any Intel P3-Coppermine benchmarks. Perhaps the best part is that it takes under 20seconds to change the speed and voltage. If you have the right motherboard it only takes a moment to go from 650 to 700 by adding a few Mhz onto the FSB.

Just be warned, despite what you might see and hear about people taking there 500's to 800Mhz and in some cases 900Mhz, it doesn't always improve your speed. After a full month of testing we found that once you go beyond the core speed, the increase you get is perhaps not worth the price you pay for the voltage or risk. Not all K7 CPUs have the same cores despite being the same base speed, always discuss this with a dealer that knows what they are doing before buying a CPU and many don't.

What's the right combination?

If you really want extra performance once you've reached the core speed of your CPU then the FSB is the best way to increase performance. Changing the cache to a slower speed and then upping the voltage + Mhz one more step (50Mhz) is unlikely to yield satisfactory results, it may even reduce performance. Our advice would be to wait for AMDs new KX133 Chipset, if you can't then Microstar has a pro version of the 6167 that's a lot like the Asus K7M but without the AGP problems (allows you to adjust FSB).

(Asus K7v [KX133] Board)

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