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Overclocking The AMD Duron
JellyBeansOnToastWithStrawberryJamonTop writes: "I noticed in Sharky Extreme and Tom's Hardware coverage of the AMD Duron processor that they both have details on the overclocking capabilities of the processor. Looks like the new Celeron 300A, eh?" It's cool to see that AMD has not locked out overclockers with their new chips. But where are the dual Athlon motherboards, please? Updated 3:19GMT by t: Apropos of overclocking, check out Feedmag's not-uninteresting take on overclocking culture.
Forget multiprocessor Athalon, I want multiprocessor K6.I've posted on thi before, and have done some more studying, it IS possible. If sombody would make a chipset to support it. AMD should really pay more attention to the multiprocessor market, their chips are inexpensive enough to make it worthwhile.
I hate to sound coy but these processors should maybe not be called, "durons," as they consume a lot of power, which makes me really wary about the lifespan of these products due to the extra heat; less actually overclocking one of these suckers without a refrigeration system. Here is a quote from the sharkyextreme article:
Sharkyextreme goes on to mention that the 16k L1 cache size may attribute to the extra power consumption-- but for a new chip with little air-time it makes me worry.
Here is a price list from sharky's. It includes shipping costs. We overclock to get a 950mhz processor for 159 bucks.
Duron 600 $92 Spartan Technologies 888-393-0340
Duron 650 $125 PC Progress 888-727-7647
Duron 700 $159 United Micro 800-943-7255
Athlon 950 $581 Econo PC 888-326-6660
P3-933/133 $777 Atacom Inc. 877-228-2266
If you burn two processors shooting for 950mhz you still have not spent 581 bucks for a "real" 950mhz processor.
For those of you wondering about multi processor setups, imagine using two 950 Durons with mo-bo for less than the price of a single "real" 950 without a motherboard.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Hmmm:) Unless you're running it on a new Duron, I don't really know what this has to do with the topic and I'm surprized you haven't been moderated down already, AC. Still it seems like a genuine question.
I'm interested in the Duron, btw, and am going to try and run Solaris/Intel on it. Linux is very cool, but unfortunately neither myself or Johnny, our compiler expert - can compile our custom written software for anything other than Solaris. We still have hiccups with Solaris/Intel/cc! Anyway, it will be very interesting to try it with the Duron, I guess we'll need an externel compiler person to help us out thoughAs I said though, your question seems sincere, so here goes:
I have Linux (mandrake 7.1) installed
Aha! The latest Mandrake.I have a Linksys PC Card nic (ec2t) in it. I can't get it to see the other machines on my home network, or to even ping them, and I am really not even sure it is working (works ok when windows is installed).
Ok, I don't have much experience with PCMCIA cards under Linux or in general, but what you need to ensure is that PCMCIA support is compield into the kernel.Go to /usr/src/linux
Type "make menuconfig". Configure everything appropriately, under networking, do add support for PCMCIA. Save the config by "Exiting", then type "make dep". After that, type "make bzImage". Copy the resulting bzImage fromI don't have any experience with Apples, but there's definitely a way to share drives through SMB (the protocol used by Microsoft for file/print/etc sharing, including Network Neighborhood). You'll need a package called "Samba". If you don't have it, you can download it from samba.org. Once this is installed, you will edit the /etc/smb.conf. Ensure that the domain/workgroup is the same as the one on your Windows machines. Also ensure that your Windows machine name has a Linux user account with the same name, then connect to the Linux machine using it. If you can't connect but do see the machine in your network neighborhood (the Linux machine from your Windows hosts), then you'll need to download the Windows 98 Registry Hack to Enable Cleartext Passwords. Perhaps with the latest Samba they've got built in support, I don't know.
Once all this is running, you'll need the latest Kernel. Get it from www.kernel.org. It has all the latest stuff in it. I'm running it, 2.3.99pre9. To do this, go into your /usr/src directory and type "lynx www.kernel.org". Scroll down and press enter on the "2.3.99pre9" link and type "D" for Download. Once you have it, click "save". Press "enter" for the default directory, /usr/src
Now, type "tar -zxpvf linux-2.3" . Now, proceed the same way as with your 2.2.15 kernel source code. Don't forget to backup your kernel images, btw. You should have a failsafe option in Mandrake 7.1 anyway. That's about it.Good luck
."A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
I had an idea, when you want to overclock, you got to reboot everytime you change the speed. Perhaps we should change this and make it possible to change speed using buttons. Remember those good old days with those 'Turbo' buttons.
It seems to me that overclocking has often been frowned upon by a lot of people. It seems that no one comes out and say "you damn well better not overclock a-hole!" but it's a silent thing....you just get the feeling that some people are of the opinion that 'overclocking is stealing processor cycles'
/. code was put in place??
Idunno - i'm glad that AMD is still making their chips 'overclockable' - or at least isn't denying anyone the ability to do so. That, in addition to the fact that AMD has been bitchslapping Intel in the processor market lately, makes me even more brand loyal than i was before. I'm on my third AMD (K6-2)...and i'm not about to switch any time soon!
VIVA LA PROCESSOR RESISTANCE!
off-topic: has anyone notice their karma decreasing for no reason since the new
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest. Why not just go out and buy a fast processor? Considering the cost of some of the cooling devices that are used (Peltier coolers etc), it would probably be cheaper to buy a fast processor in the first place.
--Lita (member of Team Slashdot)
The Real World performance of a system (not RC5) depends on much more than processor speed.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
This is equipment that is expensive enough for most of us to be somewhat annoying at the very least should we wreck it.
while i'm not one of the 'hard-core' overclocking crowd (you know...building systems that are cooled by a bath of refrigerated mineral oil), i've overclocked every system i've ever owned...and never had an overclocking related failure.
admitedly, my efforts aren't all that adventurous, but i've had a P200-MMX to 250MHz, a K6-266 to 300MHz, a PII-400 to 500MHz, dual Celeron 366s to 525MHz (my home system), and a PIII-450 to 600MHz (my work system). they all work great and are just as stable as the 'spec' versions.
why wouldn't a user want to get extra performance out of their systems? i think the risks of damaging CPUs by overclocking are are a bit overhyped.
After a few weeks operation my old
Commodore started missing & I was disturbed
at the heat being thrown out of the unit.
What I did was cool it down by puting a
voltage drop in series with the system. I made
up a resister consisting of two 250 watt bulbs
in parallel on the hot leg of the powerline
to shave the voltage down. Playing around
with that and a couple of 10 watt ceramic
resistors I got the thing running very cool
for many years of error free operation.
Has anyone tried that?
I always figuired that some chips throw
more heat than others because of variation in
uncontrollable production factors. Couldn't
one lets say buy a cooler chip for a premium;
20-30 bucks over price for scoped cool chips.
Has anyone tried shaving the chip casing
or drilling the board beneath the chip
to increase cooling? [Screw the FCC
emmission standards I'll put a refrigerator over it].
Is there any way of telling when your over
clocking is starting to fray around the
edges, so one can back off. As a political
prisoner of the Free Masons conspiracy
w/limited cash & space, chip exploding is
not a hobby I can easily get into. [I come back
from a trip, my car ain't been moved, I got
a $300 dollar muffler problem: I go to park'
this fink is holding 2/half spots. Nice don't
work so I gather a crowd, yelling Bastard
"you Masons don't care for nobody's rights".
He don't move. This little old lady
dressed in black with a a black on pearl cameo [badge] walks out of my crowd, whispers threw
his window, & the window of the next car.
Shazam, they both drop their cell phones & roll out smartly.So now I'm sitting in 5 spaces...
she's saying, soto voce, 'there's no problem
here they just misunderstood' The next day
I buy a hot sausage hero. its tainted, so I ate
the eggplant hero instead. I sliped the sausage to the witch.
But I digress, once again,
[learn from this my children]
Personally I think all these super z80s
sux but waiting for a 6200 series RISC
chip that'll run at 100 megs is probably
unrealistic. Also the software on the
pc are almost coming up to the volume of the
stuff on the commodore. Time to get with the
program, they won't let it on the net, although
this guy claims he's using his as a servor.
^ ^ ^
Since Geo. Washington, the officers of
the Armed Forces have all been
Free Masons, which may be why
their Russian Brothers had our
troop movements before our men did
in Korea.
VA doctors have found neither
chemical or biological
justification for the Desert Storm
Syndrome. Perhaps our officers
are punishing our men for what
they did under orders. Done
with a MICROWAVE LASER.
Actually, this overclocking race shows us how far the companies stand from eachother :P
:)
When Pentium II 300MHz and Celeron 300A ruled the known universe, they had a lot of slack. One could put it up to at least 450MHz without any hiccups, quite often even higher.
At that time, AMD was having a hard time. Their K6-2 sucked, it is a well known fact that they don't go up as easily as Intel's CPUs...
So, Intel was WAY ahead of AMD in the MHz race, because it could introduce CPUs with higher speed more often than AMD.
Now, the tables may have turned. Duron 600MHz goes up 350MHz (to 950MHz), has a 200MHz FSB et cetera, while Intel Celeron can barely reach the same frequencies - 733MHz -> 1GHz, that's only 266MHz...
So, AMD is holding the MHz race flag. For how long? This competition thing, I rather like it
This is very exciting, because with AMD's Slot-A CPUs you have to open the Athlon's case, and do some soldering (or you can buy special cards that attach to the Athlon for the purpose of changing the multiplier).
With a Socket-A motherboard like Asus', overclocking the Duron (and Socket-A Athlons) will be a piece of cake. Now we just need some SMP Socket-A boards... :)
I think most people do it for status. If you think about it, all the money you spend on extra cooling, added electricity, new cases, etc... doesn't really buy you any more processing power than spending $100 and upgrading the CPU. But with that $100 upgrade, you can't brag about how hardcore you are. It's kind of like souping up your car. So you've installed fancy headers, carbs, turbos, intakes, and now you have a 500hp monster car. But what good does that do you? How often do you really _need_ to go 180mph? Unless of course you're into drag-racing which is ALL (99%) about competition and status... You can also buy stock ~500hp cars and not spend one minute working on it, but you don't get to brag because any chump with $100,000 can buy a car like that, but it actually takes some skill to do it yourself...
"They" can do whatever they want. They're their chips. They don't owe you SMP. Why don't you start your own processor company and make cheap multi-processor systems and come back and tell us how easy it is....
Actually, it takes some skill to earn $100,000 to pay for aforementioned car.
It takes plain old dorkyness and a white-trash attitude to screw around with $50 bolt-on crap to get a 500hp car.
It's status though. Fastest car in the trailer park!
Given that there's only 2 (3? 4? a handful anyway) of "them" actually in the market, you're quite right. Whether the free market is enough in these conditions to ensure that "they" are not anticompetitive is a completely different question.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Some kiddie? That's amusing. So you're saying that all overclocks have the mentality of children? Massahplease.
I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest.
Of course you're not. Your obvious goal is to whine about how you feel overclocking is a male pissing contest.
Well, get over it.
If you've got something to say, at least post it without the rant next time.
Whats wrong with tweaking something you have to make it run faster? Car, computer, code...etc?
I suppose that when your code runs too slowly you don't optimize it...you go buy a new machine, right?
Nah...with that attitude you probably don't write code...
Blar.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
This is an easy one to answer.
:P
"Is a couple hundred dollars so hard to come by that we are unwilling to spend it for the peace
of mind and stability of a processor we know is not about to overheat?"
The answer, yes. Newsflash; a couple hundred bucks is rich man territory if you look at the state of humanity on a global scale. Hell we don't even hav eto leave the good ol US of A. You have even sat down NEXT to people in restuarants who consider a couple hundred bucks quite a bit of cash. Amazing huh?
That aside, the truth is, we get more performance at -significantly- reduced cost, not just a few hundred dollars. Those Durans that are doing 950mhz are $100 CPUs and outperform 1000mhz Intel chips.
Sigs are awesome huh?
HTH
Dork.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Maybe for the 1337 hax0rs on the overclocking web sites it's about status. But for myself and my friends, all of whom overclock, it is about getting more for your money!
Let's see... a celeron 300A OC'd to 450MHz cost me EXACTLY THE SAME as a 300A running at stock speed. Any cheapo fan did the trick. I was running a 450MHz system long before "mere mortals" could afford it. I was AHEAD of the curve for once in my life. For less $.
My current rig is a celeron 566 running at 850MHz. It cost me about $130 for the CPU/fan/slotket adapter. No special cooling was required. I used a fan/heat sink that cost $10. Where's the crushing additional cost?
And I know all about how the Celerons aren't as fast as a real PIII and yadda yadda yadda. Big deal. I am still getting more for my money. A lot more. More frames per second. Faster respose on the desktop. What's not to like?
If I had more money, I would buy a better processor. And I would overclock it too, as others have said.
You say that overclockers are obsessed with some penis thing, that it's all for show, that it's a waste of money. On the contrary -- I say that if you are NOT overclocking when you can, you are a chump.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I have a theory on the correct clock speed to recommend to friends and family when they inevitably ask me what they should buy.
It goes like this. Take the fastest speed you've seen, divide by two, and get plenty of RAM.
This allows for both their interest and investment in technology (if the fastest speed they have seen to date is 600mhz, they don't need to spend $1,000 on a box of metal.). The RAM should be plentiful, depending on the day. NIC for sure. The peripheral should be based on need...and that's about it.
OS....do what you can, recommend Be if it works.
--
+&x
how is a totally not overclockable chip 'the next 300a'???? do you even read the fucking article? getting a 700mhz chip up to 750mhz is not worth it, not with that bus speed. maybe my p3-600e at 800eb is this next 300a. maybe slashdotters shouldn't be talking about hardware.
Obviously you only read the other article, where the gain wasn't indeed much. But you missed the other one where four 700 MHz and one 650MHz Durons were all successfully overclocked to 950 MHz. That is IMO quite a difference. ;)
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
This is just flat wrong.
An OC'd CPU with peltier and watercooled heatsink is still cheaper than a top of the line cpu, but will perform like one.
On top of that, if you don't want to put in the time/effort/money to build that rig, you can just OC without it but not go as high. Most Celeron 533's will do 800mhz without additional cooling measures. Thats more performance for no additional cost. Consider that CPU can be purchased for around $100, and you have just saved yourself about $300 over buying a retail 800mhz cpu.
Although people say an OC'd cpu will not last as long, after 5 years of OC'ing nearly a dozen CPU's I have yet to see longevity of the CPU become a problem. Generally speaking, if you are going to burn them out it is going to happen when you are experimenting in your intitial setup, and even that is extremely rare.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Yes I have been mulling that over in my mind, and it is enticing, but too expensive.
;)
If I add the cost of a new MB, and the PC-133 I would need (just have pc-100 now...:( ) it comes out to $350 or $400 total, compared to $120 for the FC-PGA Celeron533 upgrade.
Like I said before, I'm poor, and that extra $250 is prohibitively expensive.
That said, anybody want to hire a Network Administrator with 4 years experience? I'm willing to relocate..
Sigs are awesome huh?
Here's the other gigantic e-tard of the day! SIT DOWN!!! The Duron 600 overclocks a whopping 350MHz more to 950MHz!!! And that's without mad cooling and stuff! So SIT DOWN! I remember when a 350MHz box was the fastest thing in the market man ... READ before you POST.
............ no.
Nah you need to wait for Abit's board before you decide on anything ...
............ no.
AMD would love to offer SMP systems, their working on the 760-MP chipset right now, that it takes time, there also offering plenty of help to third parties making chipsets, but SMP it completed. 760-MP should be due out in 4Q2000. The duron will work on 760-MP mobos, but the mobos might now be that cheap.
First off... This thread is supposed to be about Dr. Tom's and Sharky Extreme's articles, not about the overclocking debate. If you do it, great! If you don't, *who cares*! I've been running OC since I bumped my 486 DX2-66 up to 80Mhz, and have _never_ blown up a chip. Nowadays, with temp monitors, and screeching alarms, you'd have to be a complete moron to blow up your chip!! Ok, enough of that. Did anyone else notice how the two articles seemed to have completely different takes? Dr. Tom seems to consider this chip the new holy grail of price/performance, and Sharky seems to compare it more to the 66Mhz bus celerons. Also, did you notice how Dr. Tom had all chips running at 950Mhz with no problems, and Sharky couldn't get past 770? I wonder what the deal was there? Maybe sharky did not want to bump up the voltage. Hopefully, we'll get a Duron to test at Redhat, but until then, I'm crossing my fingers that Dr. Tom is correct (as he almost always is!). .95Ghz for $112! Awesome!
Sharky oc'ed with frontside bus only. I have yet to see more than 10 mhz on the EV6 bus, so needless to say, this explains the sad performance. Of course, Sharky had a stock system from AMD, down to the tnt2m64 8meg video. Tom however had the A7v, Asus' socket A entry. The board has dips to set the clock multiplier, as well as jumpers for voltage. This is why he was so successful. And although its not a large detail, he got 3 700's and a 650 to 950.
Anybody who's read the moderation code will probably know whether this is intended behavior... anyone?
Speaking of overclocking AMD chips... Check this thread out: http://discussions. hardwarecentral.com/Forum11/HTML/008273.html :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
AMD may have started out as an Intel licencee, as Intel wanted a second source. When Intel felt AMD was starting to compete with them they refused to licence their designs and bus to AMD. Result - Athlon and Duron with its Alpha based EV6 bus - no Intel IP there, and funnily enough free of Intel IP AMD is now the speed champion!
So gripe at AMD's history if you want to, but today's Athlon and Duron are the fastest processors you can buy.
*shrug* I never went to college and I was originally hired as a PC repair tech. I got the job as a network admin by just doing what needed to be done when it needed doing. As our Internet business grew I took on all the work of that until it is now all that I do, here I am a few years later doing a different job for the same money.
I really am good at what I do even though I'm untrained, but what is a poor degreeless guy to do?
heh.. life story. yeah.. its the weekend.
Sigs are awesome huh?
That's very good to hear. At least AMD isn't sitting on their laurels.
... but there was a article that Tom wrote over something that I believe he fudge the results.
I told my friend that I like Tom's but he told me of this incident and hasn't been back since.
ChozSun [e-mail]
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Furthermore, Intel is practically forcing serious celeron owners to overclock by still putting Celerons on the 66Mhz FSB. You buy a celeron, you set the bus to standard 100Mhz, all your peripherals are running standard and you have a nice fast stable system. Often, you don't even need cooling.
At the rate CPUs become obsolete, CPU longevity lost to overclocking is not important. 7 years down to 5 years. Big deal.
Actually, the sample Tom got WAS multiplier locked. The thing is, the chip just tells the motherboard it's "requested" multiplier, and then the motherboard decides whether or not to follow this. According to Tom's review, it IS possible to override the multiplier lock, at least on the Asus motherboard he had.
Tasty, eh?
InThane
A case of trollism. BUT, from a serious level, the whole theory of PCMCIA is a kludge. I know...I've worked with it from a hardware level. Both my PCMCIA cards work fine with Linux...worked out of the box with Slackware. Although I am always amazed that PCMCIA products work at all.
Just testing my sig.
--
Dyolf Knip