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Athlon Overclocking - The AfterBurner
NoWhere Man writes "Over at RB Computing (an AMD-only shop in Ottawa, Canada), they are distributing the AfterBurner, an Athlon Overclocking card, developped by Golden Fingers. It offers on-the-fly frequency and core voltage modifications, that is a reasonable alternative to building your own, as shown at Tom's Hardware Guide. "
Is this really cost effective? I mean, you could probably get a better performance/cost ratio by SMPing two processors, each 3/4 the speed of the one processor you were going to overclock.
Or, am I missing something?
I know that the AMD chips that are currently coming out overclock pretty well, but I'm wondering if the new "Merced" or whatever Intel is going to call it now is going to be so responsive to overclocking. My friends claim that P2s and P3s are pretty crappy for overclocking, but Celerons seem to be good. Is the new chip from intel going to overclock well?
"You ever have that feeling where you're not sure if you're dreaming or awake?"
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I spoke with the owner, and he said the afterburner works quite well. He actually sells systems pre-configured with the device in place.
Rock-on, but won't this (can this?) hurt AMD's sales for the high-priced, high-speed chips?
There's nothing to not be compatible with as there is no software involved. If you're asking if you can run Linux on an Athlon, then the answer is yes. -ctepher
Since it requires no software support (even the hardware dosen't know it's there), it should work with linux, any of the BSDs, windows, V2OS, Mach, DOS, any of the Windows (including 1.0), CP/M, App-specific OSes such as Kings Quest 1 and 2, and Zork 1-3, and any other x86 operating system you'd care to mention.
Here's the Hard OCP review of the Afterburner (from the link).
-no broken link
i doubt it but he could be talking about the following...
from http://www.rbcomputing.com/ab/afterburner.html
UPDATE: Word is, software will be coming available to adjust the L2 divider through software shortly. RB Computing will keep you updated!
The hard-wired multipiler lock of the Athlon (and awful motherboard support, you can't argue that) were the only reasons keeping me from upgrading to an Athlon. Instead I'm using a Coppermine 500E and I have it overclocked to 700MHz (5.0*140) on a Soyo 6BA+ III motherboard with an IWill Slotket II.
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
The cache divider is not controllable through the Athlon's edge connector. In some cases, higher overclocked speeds may be possible by changing the cache divider from its default setting of 1/2 to 1/3.
:-)
I'm no overclocking master, but are they suggesting you cut the L2 cache speed from 1/2 core to 1/3 core? Why on earth would you do that? Let's say your core frequency is 800 MHz, and your L2 runs at 400. If you overclock it to 900 but your L2 cache is only running at 300, surely you're getting worse performance overall than you were before...
Is this just another example of the blind worship of the almighty MHz? I think this is the first time I've seen anyone sacrifice performance for higher core processor frequencies...
Or have I just forgotten everything from my architecture class?
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
AFAIK, the biggest bottleneck in SMPin' is the OS. According to my blurry recollection, BeOS is supposed to be the most efficient at utilizing the multiple processors, NT does a half-decent job, and Win9X doesn't do SMP at all. I don't know anything about how well Linux does, but I suggest you do some more research if you want hard numbers.
I don't see any instructions or markings on the thing that would describe _how_ you set it up. Do you twist it one way to increase the multiplier? How do you know how far to twist it? what if you twisted it a decent amount, and it thought you wanted a 10000GHZ machine? Or if you wanted a .1 volt increase, and got a 10 volt increase? The dip switch solution seems more precise to me.
I thought about getting one of these things for my Athlon 700, but the idea of taking the plastic casing off the cartridge always scared me off. I'm not generally all that squeamish, but we're talking about a pretty expensive CPU here. It'd really suck to screw it up. I wish AMD would provide some sort of safe access to the pins for overclocking.
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
I see the numbers on the dials now. nevermind.
I've had my Athlon 550 for a few months now, fully-loaded with the ASUS K7M.
Just about every computer store in Ottawa (Canada) has the K7M in stock. Even the onboard VIA audio just recently got inserted into the Linux Kernel (although I prefer the good ol' Sound Blaster).
I fail to see how the motherboard issue remains.
$125 for three switches, an Rpak, and a connector?
Wow, that seems steep considering the cost of the
parts.
I've modified a couple of Athlon 500s (which both
turned out to actually be 650's based on the legend on the chip itself) to overclock at 750.
It just involves moving a few SMT resistors. This
board just gives you easier access to selections that are already possible.
Seems to be rising. Anyone with other numbers?
I bet a fair number of 500Mhz Athlon cores can do 750Mhz but are held back by the cheaper L2 cache they run. Getting a 750Mhz chip at the cost of a 500 aint too bad, even if it isn't as fast as the "real" Athlon 750s.
I tend to agree with this, but public perception is based on the higher MHz. It doesn't matter that you're using a 3600 RPM 15ms drive, or 16 MB of RAM (ugh), as long as it's equipped with an 800MHz Athlon, people think it's a rocker of a machine.
The amount (and speed) of RAM as well as the speed of the HD and accompanying bus are equally important. Otherwise, Linux (or Windows 2000) will load just as slow as a Pentium 200 with 128 MB. But most people ignore this.
The almighty MHz. Some people's friend. Some people's ennemy.
You still can't run Windoze over DR-DOS on it.
I read Ars Technica and Toms Hardware Guide often enough to know that it's all fun and games, and there are clans and cults of overclocking out there, etc. And if I wanted to, I could get into it and build myself a monster machine.
Well, I don't wanna. I'm too lazy. I've got this aging Pentium Pro/200 system that's slow by todays standards, but which has served me quite well, and actually I just don't wanna mess with hardware anymore.
This doesn't mean I don't want to *own* the fruits of such activities, though. I'd love to have the absolute screamingest machine that a couple G's could buy, and I'm sure there's someone out there that would be happy to provide such an elite box o' power for a small price.
Point is, does anyone know of any companies that build these sorta monster boxes, or is it just better to go with a good quality hardware vendore like VA Systems or something like that for my 'leet hardware needs?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I was JUST reading this today. Looks very interesting.
Not sure I'd buy it though, $125 is pretty expensive.
I just got my new Athlon system, 500mhz on a Asus K7 motherboard. It's great. A lot of the modifications towards overclocking can be done through the BIOS setup - very cool
This is really a great chip and I'm happy to give my business to AMD. I looked at the Intel chips and everything pointed to the Athlon.
Outside Loop as it says on the card... and they sell it for $80 US... (in the US)...
;)
The $125 Canadian from the Ottawa store is cool for us Canadians though.
BlackNova Traders
Overclocking, today, is pretty silly. It's rather expensive and doesn't really provide that great a benefit. It's mostly an exercise in macho tinkering, done to brag about the top speed more than to actually run the thing.
However, it was entirely sensible when Intel released a whole pile of Celerons which were perfectly capable of running at half again their stock speed, with no special cooling hardware.
It didn't make sense not to to overclock, in that case. Intel's marketing department decided to lie to everyone about what these chips could do so they wouldn't cut into their high-margin market.
However, chip manufacturers have now learned their lesson: a few people will always test to see if their chip is really as slow as the spec say, and if they learn otherwise they'll tell everyone else over the internet. So they will build their chips to run slower if they want a slow chip to sell at a cheap price, and make damn sure that there is no cost-effective way to run it faster. The golden days of overclocking are over.
Okay, so you want a fast system. You go out and buy an Athlon. Then you buy an overclocking kit to squeeze every last CPU cycle you can. The only problem: your machine runs just as slow as it did before because the rest of the system can't keep up with the processor. I don't understand why everyone worships processor speed when in reality it's bus, memory, and hard drive speed that have the greatest influence over system performance. Processor speed will never be the limiting factor in overall system speed. I'm not going to drool when the 1 GHz Athlons come out; however, I might get very excited when that $100 motherboard has a 500MHz backside bus.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
For the same amount of money, Trinity Micro will install switches on your Athlon, including a switch to change the cache clock multiplier.
I jumped on the BP6 bandwagon when they were released with a couple of celeron366's at 458. BTW I got off-week celery's at a good price and hoped for the best for 504 and didn't work.
q3a supports SMP, only in WinNT. I bought q3a expecting SMP code to be in there for linux, but Carmack doesn't think it's nessecary to have SMP in linux. That rant is for another day though =) I grabbed Win2k early to get a natvie DirectX and SMP support. The only thing I saw was complicated aps taking 50% cpu power. I never got the voodoo 3 driver to work in WIn2k quite right, so I didn't benchmark q3a with SMP(the drivers from NT game palace is you must know)
Kernel compiles in linux only take a couple minues, but that's about the only real use I get out of SMP. Linux distributes the processes wekk enough, but I rarely do something that really taxes the machine, besides q3a and compiling kernels. And GCC is the only thing that uses both. About the only REAL benafit, is that I can run GCC with only one job, and it doesn't tie down the system.
With just about every OS now supporting SMP, including WIn2k, OS X, linux, etc., when will companies start writing apps that take advantage of it? Is Win9x holding SMP back because it doesn't support it?
I've said it once, and I'll say it again! The biggest bottleneck for SMPs is the concurrency supported by the cachememory link. Not bandwidth, not latency, not capacity, concurrency.
If you don't match the concurrency of your memory link with the concurrency of your clients (i.e. processors), you're hosed for any demanding application.
What do I mean by memory link concurrency? It could come from crossbar versus bus, or multi-ported memories, or from multibanked (interleaved) memories.
Cray has zillion-banked memories. Processors now have multi-banked caches, because there are lots of things going on at once inside out-of-order issue processors!
It's all about concurrency matching!!
nick
I'd rather buy this:
e cs/tech___specs.html
http://www.kryotech.com/Products/superg/Tech_Sp
It's a barebones athlon based PC overclocked to 1Ghz, and it comes with a 1 year warranty.
I'd rather have someone else to blame if I happened to fry my machine.
Mike
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
This is cool, except for the fact that it's 120$ canadian. Right now, actually, I am building my own athlon OC'er with the circuit on tomshardware.
I finally got 5 of those connectors after about 2 months of trying to find them. No one really sells them in non-bulk supply. Now I'm just waiting on my resistor packs and diodes. So far I've spent maybe 20$ on the whole thing and that's all I'm going to have to spend. If you know how to make one you can save a lot of money!
Btw, if anyone wants to buy 1 or 2 of the actual 40-pin connectors email me at jpal@linuxfan.com. They're a bitch to find, and I'm willing to sell 1 or 2 of them if someone else wants to build their own.
-John
180 $ for Athlon 500. + 70 $ for NinaMicros overclocker. = Athlon 700 with slightly slower cache. For under 200 bucks, I have a slightly slimmed down Athlon 700. I don't see a PROBLEM with this. Do you? (And yes. Most reports indicate that you can overclock an Athlon 500 up to 700 and have it run just as reliably as a real 700.)
It's only 180$ or so for an athon 500, right? And about 70$ for ninjamicro's keen overclocker. That's under 200$. And most people have been able to clock up to 700 Mhz with no problems. Small minus for the cache slow down. :)
So you've got a CPU that's almost as good as a 600$ CPU for less than 200$. Hell, get two of them, if you want an SMP setup so badly.
This was the URL on the picture of the board at RB Computing.
Its selling for $80 US and they are in Colorado, not Canada.
Can you SMP Athlons..?
I am considering getting a SMP box running and right now I have 2(370 Overclocked Celerons) in mind maybe I should change this to Athlons.
Come lets here you suggestions for the best non Intel SMP machine....
Overclocking is great. Heck, any hardware hack is great. And it's not about 'sticking it to the man' either.. it's simply about knowing how to *use* technology instead of being enslaved by it.
When I buy a PIII, I'm not paying intel for the right to use it at a certain frequency, I'm paying intel for a chip that *they* have guaranteed will run up to a certain speed. Over that speed, and you are on your own.
Now.. when the Celeron 300A was out, and you could easily clock it to 150%, heck, that's fantastic. A real money saver... spend $30 on extra gear to cool it, and you were set.
Now.... do I spend $75 on extra fans/heat sinks, when I could buy a chip that's rated at a a similar higher speed for about the same added cost? Sure.. it might cost me a few dollars more.. but then I *know* it will work too.
Like.. Kryotech.. now, those Cool athlon 1Ghz jobs have major geek cool factor, I'll admit, and I'd love to have one.. but realistically, I could be 2 other full machines for the price of just their base model, each machine being around 600Mhz anyway.... so why would I bother? What good would it do?
I want one that mounts the switches on an unused drive bay, kind of like Creative is doing with their sound card connecter bay 'Live Drive' or something like that. Then I'd need some big assed knobs that go up to 11 like Spinal Tap had. That way everyone knows I can crank that Athlon up anytime I want to.
Bleh!
The point was that overclocking is a result of intentional under-rating for marketing purposes. There may still be some stuff out on the market for which it is practical, but now the chip makers are clued in to the fact that they can't get away with just underrating their own chips in the documentation. Someone will catch the lie.
The reason they would make it hard for people to overclock is that they would rather sell you the more expensive chip. Courtesy to customers is in damn short supply, which is why low profit margin cars are built to disintegrate in time for the new model to come out ($6000 construction cost for a $10000 car that lasts 5 years, or $10000 construction cost for a $50000 car that lasts 50 years: looked at as individual jobs, the latter is much more profitable, but to a long-term industry, they are close to equal; fairness doesn't even come into it). In theory, competition is supposed to wipe out these tactics, but industries always have these little understandings that member companies will follow even to their own demise, like a daimyo refusing to arm his troops with modern guns and change the face of Japanese feudal society even when he'll be defeated otherwise.
Here's the article
-A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
does overclocking produce fumes that induce highness?
how can you compare an overclocked chips price to a non-over clocked, but overclockable chip?
that makes no sense
especially since clock speed is not really a great measure of anything other than clock speed....
it used to say how many instructions per time period, but it doesn't do that anymore w/ all the different execution units....
not that overclocking is a bad thing but clock speed fixation is
Need a Catering Connection
Already a couple of years ago I thought about how nice it would be to have a gas pedal under the desk; when playing or compiling, you could speed the system up like a car... of course it's pretty idiotic idea. And now, it seems, anyone can do just that.
NOSPAM@REMOVETHIS.NO.SPAM - you'll find the real address somewhere
As a techie the first question I asked myself was why not?. Why wouldn't you want to overclock an Athlon? True the other limitations of the computer bring down the effectiveness....but when you realize the difference between what we have...and what we could have...you'll know why...
Its a driving force in us all...
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
At least you can encode your cds to mp3 on both CPU's :)
This is why AMD is gonna beat out intel on the chip market. Intel just locks their chips at one speed. AMD sets the Athlon to a speed, but makes it possible to OC by way of an add-on card which also generates revenue for those willing to manufacture/distribute it. They're opening a whole new avenue of sales in the PC arena.
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
and why not ? i was wunning windoze 3.1 fine with drdos 6 & ndos 7
Perhaps it's also getting harder to overclock these CPU's as they're getting faster, faster than the FSB is getting faster.
Take for example: with a clock multiplier of 6 on a 100 Mhz FSB (600Mhz chip), upping the FSB to 133 MHz boosts the CPU to 798Mhz (198Mhz gain). Compare with a 400Mhz chip (multiplier of 4 on a 100Mhz FSB), upping the FSB to 133 will boost the CPU to 532MHz (132MHz gain). In both cases the CPU speed has gone up be a factor of 1/3. But perhaps CPU's are not effected so much by the factor, but the shear amount.
I'm no hardware guy: I don't know the effects of increases MHz and heat on these increasingly smaller dies. Maybe somebody would like to dicuss this (and probably point out the error of my ways.)
180+70=250 (carry the one!) sorry couldn't resist
$125 CDN is pretty high, considering it's about $1 in parts.
As per usual, I'll do it myself.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
From what understand, Linux doesn't scale past 2 CPUs at all well. It has it's arse kicked by NT which scales better.
I'm sorry to you P3 owners. I know your 600Mhz chips melt and your 733s have problems booting, but take heart, you've got the name.
E.
If i was Intel I probably wouldn't have said that floating point was the crux of a processor because I'd be afraid my competitor would produce a chip with 7 FPUs working in parallel to compete with my 4 FPUs running in serial...
No. Attempting to run Linux on an Athlon will result in a Blue Screen of Death.
Windows ran fine under DR-DOS.
This is true; however, the course-grained semaphoring in Linux is at this very moment rapidly being replaced with fine-grained semaphoring. When this is complete Linux likely may start beating NT in the large-cpu configurations.
Okay, for my peace of mind, my interpretation of what you said be (please correct me if I'm wrong)...
... // Lots of processing
... // Do more processing
... // Lots of processing
... // Do more processing
Coarse grained being (sorry, C++ not C):
someObj::someFunc()
{
myMutex.lock();
mySharedObj->doSomeSomthing();
myMutex.unlock();
}
Whereas fine-grained would be:
someObj::someFunc()
{
myMutex.lock();
mySharedObj->doSomeSomthing();
myMutex.unlock();
}
True, but blown way out of proportion by mindcraft's benchmarketing. Its hardly an arse kicking, but the truth of the matter is both Linux and NT get badly smacked around by both solaris and irix in terms of SMP scaling.
Have you tried BeOS? the supposed SMP king of the world doesn't do much better. It forces apps to break themselves up into lots of threads, but (what a surprise) 90% of the work still ends up being in one thread. So to get BeOS to really use those CPUs, you have to run multiple apps at a time, or apps specifically coded to break compute bound tasks into threads (hey, I've heard that before... oh yeah, its the same as every other thread supporting, SMP OS). I suppose BeOS gets a slight edge by moving that last 10% to another CPU, but its hardly revolutionary.
The point is, every company (including the commercial linux companies) have marketing departments, and if you don't believe that the marketing department lies constantly, well, you're the reason that marketing works so well.
Don't believe the hype, be it from MS, Apple, Redhat, or Be. The conventional slashdot wisdom is usually some companies party line, reinforced by the "testamonials" of rabid advocates.
As the fab for a given process became more mature, the defect level usually decreased. So at the beginning of a product cycle, you got more of the slow parts and fewer of the fast ones, and over time, more parts were produced with the higher speed ratings. Over time, then, the price of the high-speed parts declined.
Then Intel reinvented itself as a consumer products company, and started pricing ICs the way GM prices cars. In the auto world, a luxury car costs maybe 30% more to build than an economy car, but sells for perhaps 3x as much. Intel started doing this for processors, with advertising-promoted brands at different points in the speed spectrum. The interaction between this policy and the way fabs actually work resulted in some deliberately undermarked chips, and the rebirth of "overclocking" as a semi-respectable enterprise.
Then some distributors started shipping systems with overclocked CPUs. Some even printed fake part numbers on the chip package. This led to trouble. Intel may have lost some revenue, but worse, they were getting a reputation as an unreliable IC supplier. So they added holograms on chips, part ID info readable from software, and speed-checking (which is hard; CPU chips ordinarly lack an on-chip timebase.)
Today, IC fab yields are so good that the part-selection approach is rare. If parts are failing, the fab has a problem. CPU speed and model has become mostly a market positioning thing.
In the industrial computer world, underclocking is common; the temperature margins improve, and so does reliability.
At this point, Intel and AMD are competing so hard on speed and price that neither can afford to undermark. So overclocking is a marginal idea at best. Gamers are probably better off getting a new graphics board.
...
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
If you can afford a motherboard with more than two CPU clots, and can also afford the extra CPUs, then you can also afford Solaris or BeOS. No need to use blue light specials like NT or Linux. Go ahead and splurge!
duhhhhhhh
Ill say it again jus to reiterate. The PIII Flip-Chips (PIII 500E etc.) are HIGHLY overclockable. Almost intentionally so. They have lower multipliers than original PIII's and everything. There made with the smaller Micron Manufacturing process so they generate less heat. There core is 'flipped' upwards so the cooler cools directly to where the heat is being generated basically. All of that leads one to wonder.. And yes they can be made to SMOKE. Right now those sound like the most fun to OC. oh well
Jeremy Allen
jallen@idminc.com
I can't find a 700MHz Athlon ANYWHERE close to that cheap on Pricewatch, or anywhere else.
Was it just a loose estimate, or do you know something I don't?
$180 + $70 $200?
If this thing is as simple as it looks (switches, resistor pack, connector) can anyone post a "schematic" (more like a wiring diagram for something that hasn't any proper semiconductors)?
I figure I could build one of these for $3. Anyone else out there with me? Geeks should build these and sell them to local shops for $60 CAN. It'll pay for your own personal Athlon in NO TIME FLAT!
Then, we don't need complicate programming technic, and, i would better live today. more special than you, Dear english king mr coinstein!!! i must say thankx to s*n(company) for hard try. :>
Just a few things that may/may not have been said already.
:)
First of all, why is this particular product being highlighted? I've seen at least 8 other companies making these. Not to mention that making your own is a simple matter for a first-year EE student.
Second, why do I see so much pooh-poohing of overclocking in this discussion? I think one of my happiest hardware moments was when I got my K6-2 380 to run stably at 500Mhz. Believe me there *was* a performance difference, and I don't really play 3D games. Now that I just got my Athlon 650, I'm assembling the parts to make my own "goldenfingers." I see many accounts of 650's doing 750 and 800 without a problem, and without modifying the cache divisor.
Speaking of the Athlon, damn. I'm very impressed with this chip. I have never been this close to the "bleeding edge" before, and it's a neat feeling. It takes less then 6 minutes to do a complete kernel build (dep, clean, bzImage, modules, etc.), 3 SETI@Home packets a day, and I can turn on almost all the bells and whistles in E with no problems.
If you dont want to overclock, don't. I wouldn't do it on a mission-critical machine, but it's a thrilling feeling the first time you boot up faster then before.
If you want to see some crazy-assed OCing, check this out:
http://totl.net/Eunuch/Eunuch2.html
Now *thats* serious
There are about a half-dozen of these adapters available for sale. They range in price from $20 to $125 depending on options (voltage tweaks, build quality, etc.). I'm no overclocking master, but are they suggesting you cut the L2 cache speed from 1/2 core to 1/3 core? Why on earth would you do that? Let's say your core frequency is 800 MHz, and your L2 runs at 400. If you overclock it to 900 but your L2 cache is only running at 300, surely you're getting worse performance overall than you were before... http://www.tgwbp.addr.com/cgi-bin/wwwboard.cgi http://www.tgwbp.addr.com/cgi-bin/wwwboard.cgi http://www.tgwbp.addr.com/cgi-bin/wwwboard.cgi
Check out this page for guidelines for building your own. John Carcich, a regular on the Alt-CPU mailing list, is a retired engineer who's taken up computing as a hobby to supplement his windsurfing. He noted some problems with Tom Pabst's original notes on the Athlon circuitry and has been refining the design found on this page. He decided to make everything available to anyone who wants to make their own for fun or for profit.
This is pretty useful for me, seeing how I just got an Athlon and live an hour from Ottawa. Anyone wanna send me $125 to buy one? Please?
The answer is always C.
What BeOS needs is more good programs and a better networking environment. Time will tell. Meanwhile I'll use Linux. You can read a good whitepaper on BeOS. http://www.be.com/products/whitepapers/
I think that this was a joke, but in case someone takes it seriously; this isn't true. There was some initial trouble with Linux and Athlon, but it's all sorted now.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
Damn right! I got the FSB up to 112MHz, which gives me a 616MHz CPU!
The overall system is much faster, including disk i/o and memory i/o, thanks to the faster bus.
Pay $125 less for a 500 Mhz chip, which commonly known to be a clocked down 650 or 700.
Then pay $125 more for the overclocking board to make it run at 650 or 700.
Why?
AIX on PowerPC rocks because IBM has spend years devising an integral SMP solution which allows the various multiprocessor packages to actually share cache. This will be highly significant to the future of Linux performance on SMP because of IBM's implicit pledge to apply its solution of how to cache in an SMP system to Linux. At a point down the road, Linux SMP on PowerPC will be the best and least expensive way to provide CPU power. If IBM ever has the brains to reissue the PowerPC for Linux as an affordable turnkey package, they could rule the world. Anybody from IBM's marketing depts. listening? Usually they're not, but I'm always hoping they are.
Some of you need some perspective on overclocking.
Imagine, if years ago I had a "fast" 486Dx2-50.
Someone sells a board for $100 bucks that lets me run it at 66 or even 70 megahertz.
Wow.
Now multiply my 10.
Wow.
I'm sorry I can't remember the URL atm, but if you come visit us at www.delphi.com/baitshop/start then someone will find it for you... Vim Fuego
Most of what we did on the departments alphas at Iowa State sucked cycles--when they were running, which was a small fraction (Gad, SAS is a pig). It turned out that (most of the time) an extra 32M or 64M for each extra user was enough to avoid most of the swapping, so that unless both jobs launched at the same time, the person sitting at the unit would never even notice the extra users.
Actually there are about a dozen 'Golden Fingers'' cards out there now 1/'Rubies for Golden Fingers' from Japan 2/ Ninjamicro's 'Freespeed Pro' from the UK 3/ There are 3 different types of 'Powerchips' also from the UK. 4/ The 'Powercard' from Germany, which also lets you alter L2 cache ratios, that is if your up to slodering up the extra 4 wires coming off it. 5/ Computernerd also make a device that lets you alter the L2 cache ratio. 6/ The 'Áthlon Maximiser' 7/ Outside loop's 'Áfterburner' 8/ The 'Northwind GFD' from Trinitymicro. 9/ Extreme Computing sells 2 models, including ones that fits in a 3.5" drive bay & fits on the Golden Fingers via a cable. That way you only have to turn dials without having to open the case. I'm sure there's more out there too. If anyone wants links to the relevants sites for the cards I mentioned, just e-mail Mick (me) at cosmus@tpg.com.au
For the great link!
It was made by Outside Loop Computers the 'Golden fingers' is just the most OC hardware freak's nickname for these devices! There are about 10 other places you can get one, but each is a little different...the OL is currently the de-facto best. If some morons had actually read the hardocp (great site btw :) article they would know that. OF COURSE it works with linux, all it does is change voltage and multiplier of the CPU! I happen to have a full mod from www.outsideloop.com on a msi 6167 which allows L2 cache divider action as well, because while AMD 500's might actually all have 650 cores now, they sure don't have 400mhz capable L2. BUT, my Athlon at 800 and L2 at 266mhz works great! With the mod, you can change the L2 divider: 1/1 1/2 and 1/3. Soon there will be software that does this, but will likely only run in win32 OSes...sorry, until bioses have it (not too long, super bypass made it in quick) linux guys will have to either run the cpu slower, or get a full mod.
r_smp 1 = on
r_smp 0 = off
Around a 30% increase at lower resolutions
For most vidcards, 1024 and higher its the same, fillrate limited. Yes even the stupid GeFarce from nvidia.
And makes it to 750 with a $50 golden finger...850 with a full mode.
:P
Those sorry little intel cpus have fixed multipliers, and to do that 550E to 800+ you need to run the fsb WAYYYYY past 133...good luck with AGP, on a BX it will be totally fucked (2/3) on a 133a or i820 it will still suck.
The PIII-E is newer too, the older 0.25 p3s sucked, the friggin L2 always getting in the way
Yeah! My thoughts exactly!
...why 1.5 year old BX beats the snot out of i820...
:) getting a 800 athlon setup to run at 640x480 bub.
WITH ramshit!
Sorry, i820 and ramshit is a JOKE, even intel didn't invite rambus to the 'memory forum' last month.
DDR is going to eat ramshit for breakfast. 10% more to make than single rate sdram versus a complete retooling of your fab for a barely tested hyped up crappy memory spec. PC800 (really 400mhz) doesn't mean crap when the latency is sky-high, the power drain is crazy (maybe 1/4th of a module can run at a time) and its a fucking SERIAL bus!
The gefarce from nvidia is a perfect example, the ddr versions are a good 30-50% faster at higher resolutions, which is where it counts. I didn't spend all that time (but not much money
Also, the Athlon has the same *L1* cache that a celeron has L2, and we all remember how a 300a@450 smoked its pricer PII-450 cousin last year, don't we? Only servers care about L2 being slower, and Athlon Ultra (aka AMD's Xeon - up to 2mb full speed L2 and then stick it on hotrail's chipset - 8 way smp) will take care of that this year. I used to be an intel loyalist but ramshit made me switch.
BTW, 128mb of ramshit goes for around $800-1000 right now, if you can FIND it.
Yes.. it has dipswitches.. but c'mon.. who
here is afraid of dip switches?
It's also 60$ and not 100+
www.ninjamicro.com
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Just get the Freespeed Pro. Stable and easy to install. And only $65 with shipping included. I'm just a satisfied customer. URL:
www.ninjamicro.co.uk