Eddie eddie eddie....lemme splain somethin...
1) Not every processor rolling off the line is tested for reliabilty. Intel will take a sample of the run, and determine safest Mhz rating from there. Therefore many CPU's produced can run faster than thier rating, whereas others may not.
2) Once a company gets good at producing a chip, they continue to make lower Mhz rated chips to sell in low-end, cheaper machines. But do you think they set their machine to "crappy" to make a slower processor? Nope, they lock the clock multiplier and stamp whatever speed they want on there. That brand new 400Mhz Celeron might be just as good as a brand new 533Mhz Celeron.
3) Now consider that the Celeron has a PII core. What's that mean? Two things:
a) The PII runs at a 100Mhz FSB where the Celeron runs at a 66Mhz FSB. But is it a design or physical limitation???? No. Intel creates them this way, and sells one cheaper than the other. It's not really cheaper for Intel to make a Celeron than a PII, aside from the extra cache. The cores are the same.
b) The PIII is basically a fast PII. That means that intel is very good at making these processors, which means that:
When you buy a new Celeron, you are in most cases buying a chip that is capable of much more than its Mhz rating. In fact the Celeron is the best chip to have ever come out when it comes to overclocking, even though Intel locked the onchip multiplier to prevent overclocking.
If your CPU is operating within temperature and votage requirements, then it is operating safely....even if it's "overclocked". You'll typically know within a couple days whether your overclocking experiment was safe by 1) Monitoring the temperature 2) Making sure not to screw with the core voltage too much and 3) Running the piss out of it and waiting for errors.
If no errors occur, and the CPU is operating within its heat/voltage specs, then you can breath a sigh of relief and not worry too much about it.
I've never seen ANY processor die from old age before its time. And every processor I own (that's running) now is overclocked. My Celeron is at 500Mhz from 400...my K6-2 is at 400Mhz from 350...and my old P100 is at 133Mhz (oh yippee).
Don't think of it as driving a car faster than its rating from the manufacturer. Think of it as simply driving your car faster than the speed limit.
Slackmaster 2000
P.S. I must say that if you do overclock you are taking a risk. I am not implying otherwise. If you break something it's your own damn fault.
mad scientist!!