Overclocking the FC-PGA Celeron

Conclusion

The new FC-PGA Celerons aren't as high performing as we'd like them to be, but when overclocked they can give you quite a bit of bang for your buck.

If you happen to have a BX motherboard lying around that can support the new Coppermine based Pentium III or has official support for the Coppermine128 Celeron, then picking up a 566 and pushing it to at least 850MHz wouldn't be a bad idea. If you already have a 133MHz FSB motherboard such as one based on the VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset then you may be better off going with a FC-PGA Pentium III 550E or 600E and overclocking that to 733/800MHz. At 733MHz you'd have a slightly faster setup than the Celeron at 850MHz, depending on the price difference between the CPUs the Celeron may still be the more attractive option even in this case.

The best case scenario for the Celeron 566 seems to be running it at 952MHz on a BX motherboard. Since you only need to have the 112MHz FSB frequency at your disposal (something almost all BX motherboards support) in order to accomplish this, it shouldn't be too difficult as long as your chip can physically run at that frequency. At 952MHz the Celeron becomes a very powerful contender, and for a CPU that costs under $200 you'd have one very cost effective setup that outperforms most of what's currently out there.