the setting i gave you are very safe from what i've read about that xp2500. actaully people are reporting that having the default 11.5 multiplier and simply raising front side bus to 200mhz is very safe also. you would end up with an xp3200 at $92. some people are going even higher.
volcano 9 is a sweet HSF you should be able to overclock FSB easily. the basic concept is to lower the multiplier as low as it goes and inscrease FSB until system is unstable and back off a few settings. than you use the multiplier to fine tune cpu speed to get that last performance gain. here ya go:
http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/showthread.php?threadid=20942
if you want to be boring and safe just leave it all to default. i actually have my xp2500 at 166mhz and my pc3200 at 200mhz. i want this thing to last forever
mid 40's is perfect. my xp2500 runs 35 celcius at idle on my biostar m7ncd pro mobo and 45celcius idle on my asus a7n8x dlx mobo, both are nforce 2 boards.
to utilize dual channel you should use memory banks 2+3 which are color coded blue. you need a memory module in each one so at least 2 memory sticks are required for dual channel. it's recommended you use 2 same sticks meaning same make/ model/ size/ type example:
2 corsair XMS pc3200 256MB on banks 2+3
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if you only have one 1024MB stick you are out of luck.
for BIOS settings this is what you can do----
default settings for you setupshould be:
CPU external freq:166
CPU multiplier:11
safe overclocks would be
for increasing from 333mhz to 400mhz front side bus at same cpu clock speed. result in same xp2500:
CPU external freq:166
CPU multiplier:9
must have DDR 400 (pc3200)
for increasing to 400mhz bus and increasing cpu clock speed. results in xp3200:
CPU external freq:200
CPU multiplier:11
must have DDR 400 (pc3200)
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the reason why i don't mention memory FSB setting is because you can simply have the memory set to "set by SPD" which will automatically adjust to settings read from the memory (SPD = serial presense detect). memory set to SPD should be the default setting, if thats correct do not change it.
-edit
i said multiplier was 11.5, the correct is 11. i corrected all the numbers so should be correct setting for use in BIOS now
