Intel has been manufacturing their Pentium II, Celeron, and now Pentium III CPU cores at a .25 micron die-size since December of 1997. This fact alone isn't important to the consumer necessarily, but it is important when ascertaining why recent Celerons and Pentium III CPUs overclock so well.
By refining the tooling, manufacturing technique, and assembly processes of their .25 micron implementation for over a year and a half, Intel has managed to attain extremely high chip yield rates on even their fastest CPU models, a rarity in the semiconductor business. This, in turn, virtually guarantees that the majority of CPU cores being produced by Intel the past year or so have had strong potential towards handling an overclocked environment.
Unfortunately other factors come into play when diagnosing the problems that hinder an overclocked system from maintaining stability. Too much of the praise/blame is often dumped at the CPU's feet, much like the Quarterback of your favorite football team.
When the team wins, the QB gets the sports page headlines of glory the next day. When the team loses the headlines turn nasty and the QB is lynched.
CPUs do hold the majority of responsibility when talking about overclockability success, but the system infrastructure itself often holds success or failure in its grasp independently of the CPU's quality level.
Therefore we'll begin with some background information on the P3 itself, and we'll then move onto the system level techniques that can assist you in hitting the magic numbers you've seen Sharky Extreme hit.
