Teach An Old Athlon New Tricks

budn3kkid writes "Seems like Upgradeware have a new gadget out for those overclockers looking to upgrade their age old Athlon mobo (KT133, KT266 etc.) with a spanking new AMD Barton CPU. Also, saw an article at ol' Tom's about it right here as well."

Comments

Already slashdotted

[Alan]

*sigh*

Only two comments posted, and already the link is showing a lovely error page.

Google cache still around though, grab it here.

Since the provided link is hosed...

[ncc74656]

...try this instead. The server isn't /.'d (yet), but the link to the page with more info about the XP-TMC is invalid. (None of the other product links on that page work, either...mighty fine website. :-P )

Choked Bus?

[rice_web]

This upgrade raises the concern of the choked bus. I mean, who really wants to run a 3000+ on a 133MHz system bus?

I do, and benchmarks have consistently shown that an increase in bandwidth for the Athlon rarely produces a substantial increase in speed (i.e. the recent speed "jumps" from AMD).

Re:Choked Bus?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Quake3 and most of the other benchmarks the CPU with a 133MHz bus @ 2.133GHz performs worse than the cpu running with a 166MHz bus at 1.833GHz.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030703/tmc_ad ap ter-04.html

Re:Choked Bus?

[CTho9305]

The Athlon is comparatively simple, and the 400MHz FSB is overkill.

This isn't because of simplicity - it has to do with the size of cache lines in the L2 cache. The P4 fetches larger blocks with each miss, meaning a longer wait when a miss occurs. The Athlon, making smaller fetches, requires less bandwidth for a given miss. Obviously, if you designed worst-case code that was aimed at generating pure misses, both processors would be abbysmal and heavily affected by FSB, but normal code is not like that.

Re:Ha!

[suss]

The link is almost as reliable as my Athlon system.

It is? If you're having trouble with the stability of your system, it's most probably either your Power Supply Unit or RAM, don't blame the CPU.

I have an "Athlon System" with good RAM and CPU and it hasn't been down in about 3 years.

I don't see why you got modded up as funny, as it wasn't.

Re:Wrong..

[Blaskowicz]

Some people indeed underclock their CPU and lower the voltage, in order to cool it with a 5V fan, or get an fanless PC.
Here's the rigs of the creator and webmaster of the most visited french hardware site :P

2600+ isn't a Barton chip...

[WIAKywbfatw]

An Athlon XP 2600+ isn't a Barton core chip, it's a Thoroughbred "B" chip.

The Barton core chips are:

Barton 3200+ (2.250GHz, 512KB cache);
Barton 3000+ (2.167GHz, 512KB L2 cache);
Barton 2800+ (2.083GHz, 512KB L2 cache);
Barton 2500+ (1.833GHz, 512KB L2 cache).

The top Thorougbred core chips are:

Thoroughbred 2800+ (2.250GHz, 256KB L2 cache);
Thoroughbred 2700+ (2.167GHz, 256KB L2 cache);
Thoroughbred 2600+ (2.083GHz, 256KB L2 cache);
Thoroughbred 2400+ (2.000GHz, 256KB L2 cache).

Note the increased L2 cache size on the Barton, which AMD cite as the reason for the 200-300 point rise in their performance rating for those chips (eg, Barton 2.167 GHz = Thoroughbred 2.167GHz + 300). Obviously, the latest FSB bump introduced with the Barton family helps too.

In some situations a Thoroughbred 2800+ will outpace a Barton 3000+ because of it's greater clock speed but, in most cases, the Barton with its greater L2 cache will win out.

Anyhow, given this story is about "overclockers looking to upgrade their age old Athlon mobo (KT133, KT266 etc.) with a spanking new AMD Barton CPU", I thought it prudent to point out your incorrect assumption about the XP 2600+ chip.

In all likelyhood, you probably wouldn't need any sort of adapter to fit a Thoroughbred chip to most older Athlon motherboards - I know that I could swap the 1.2GHz CPU in my machine for a 2800+ with no hassle but wouldn't be able to do the same with a 3200+, or even a 2500+.

But if you're really going to skip the 2800+ for the 3000+ or 3200+, then you're paying 50 percent or 110 percent more for your CPU in the first place. And if you're doing that, then you might as well be buying a new motherboard.