For beginners, for some reason my EPoX motherboard kept setting the timings by default to 3-4-5-8, which is wrong. I saw an instant speed increase when I set timings correctly. Here is a quick look at CPU-Z that explains SPD default timings for 200 MHz and 250 MHz.

Here is memory displayed after correcting motherboard’s default voltage at 200 MHz.

I started process of overclocking the motherboard by altering FSB and core voltage of CPU. Being that my test rig is using air cooling, I was not able to actually push memory as much as it could go, but where I got was remarkable all alone.

I was able to increase FSB to 255 MHz, which brought CPU from 2.2 GHz to approximately 2.8 GHz. Then, I was able to alter memory timings. I was able to alter memory from 3-4-4-8 to 3-4-3-6 before I started to notice any instability. I am rather sure that with a better cooling solution, I could have over clocked whole rig even further. I got best results when I over clocked FSB and the memory together. Let’s take a look at before and after performance benchmarks.