AMD 2500+ Socket A CPUs Compared

SuperPuppy writes "Hardcoreware.net has rounded up three 2500+ Socket A processors from AMD. An AthlonXP, based on the Barton core (this particular one predates the locked multipliers we've been seeing lately), a Mobile Athlon, based on the Barton SOI, and the new Sempron, which is based on the Tbred core. Each processor differs in clock frequency and cache size, but most importantly, the Mobile Athlon takes up a LOT less juice than either of the other two, and is therefore a remarkable performer in terms of overclocking. The Sempron was quite disappointing on all fronts but price."

Comments

CPU Market

[sofakingon]

In general, The need for new CPU's has stagnated in the last year or so. What can't you do with a 2.4Ghz HT Intel CPU? The "bleeding edge" isn't as far ahead as it used to be. What do you guys think will be the next revolution in the CPU (or GPU, for that matter) market?

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you guys think will be the next revolution in the CPU (or GPU, for that matter) market?

A CPU core for every thread. A GPU for every 3D model on the battlefield.

Re:CPU Market

[oxygene2k2]

multicore - a bunch of real cpu cores (not that HT hack) on a single chip. of course, you need a scalable SMP/NUMA capable OS for that (scalable in terms of, say 8 cores/chip*4 chips = 32cpus)

Re:CPU Market

[noselasd]

The next revolution might be when we get ram and bus speed up to the current CPU speeds. I can only imagine how blazingly fast a computer
with enough ram bandwidth and the CPU could fetch data from the RAM in
the speed of the CPU...
--
Just my $.02 , may I have them back please.

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

In the last year you say? I'm still using a 550MHz pIII box I bought in 2000. I recently pondered upgrading it but don't need the extra speed as I don't play games (I have a PS2 and use FreeBSD).

Darling Smorgrav

Re:CPU Market

[LiquidCoooled]

Word processing or web browsing would ROCK at those speeds.

I know I'm being pedantic, but there is no reason in faster bigger better when current tech is so underused.

Its like buying a car that does 200mph, but then only doing the school run in it.

For those of us that *use* our computers to the fullest, your right it will be a godsend.
Direct access to memory without a deep cache, or needing a super pipeline would definately be nice.

The cache on my old 62020 was 256 BYTES, perfect for fitting a tight loop in and short enough to not cause problems. The current range of cpus have more cache than I used to have main memory!

Speaking of which, could you fit and run an entire OS from cache? is it even possible?

Re:CPU Market

[renoX]

Unless you slow down a lot the CPU, this is unlikely to happen: in the same technology, propagation delays implies that the CPU will always run much faster than the RAM.

Using cache and several links from CPU to RAM to add bandwith, helps but the delay is still there and will be felt in case of cache miss due to branch mispredict for example.

Re:CPU Market

[IAR80]

Low consumption cpus.

Re:CPU Market

[mmkkbb]

Probably unsafe with current cache models. A set-associative or direct-mapped cache would probably get written over with new memory accesses. A fully associative cache might work if you can mark particular cache lines as off-limits, but associative caches are also slow.

Re:CPU Market

[sparcnut]

The need for new CPU's has stagnated in the last year or so. What can't you do with a 2.4Ghz HT Intel CPU?

Run Longhorn?

Re:CPU Market

[Khali]

Silence.

I'm quite fed up with these noisy computers. I have 4 of them at home, and except for the laptop, they all generate much noise, because they heat so much that every little piece, CPU first, needs a fan. I hardly can hear me think anymore. One of these systems acts as a server that I keep up at night. I did my best to make it go silent but I can still hear it behind the door.

In some way it means the same as another post right before mine: low power dissipation. This value has dramatically increased in the past few years, in the name of the top speed race, but at the price of our tranquility.

It also joins the view of anther poster that most users don't need the extra power offered by the latest CPUs. I certainly don't, so I'd rather use a quiet 1GHz machine than a noisy 3GHz one.

This is why I'm quite sad to see that you cannot easily buy Transmeta-based systems. This is exactly the kind of CPU I would enjoy, if only my online computer parts store had that available. What I am really looking for is a completely fanless system.

Re:CPU Market

[Epistax]

How about first we get the cache to access as fast as the CPU?

Re:CPU Market

[noselasd]

And that was one of my points. CPUs have caches and advanced pipelining/branch prediction/TLBs etc. Why ? Cause ram access is
amazingly slow relativly speaking. Make it faster and you don't need
all these things. (Well, ram is located further away, and there will be delays for other reasons, still, things would be much,much better..)

Re:CPU Market

[JPelorat]

Wonder how many more decades it'll be till we're talking about how many cores a chip has, in the same manner that we talk about transistors now. That'll be freaky. And cool.

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

light-speed-delays. Unless it's a few nanometers away, ram isn't ever going to be fast enough, in terms of current processors. I mean, you can actually see the distance between ram and processor, and it's got to traverse that every single time it wants data.

Re:CPU Market

[TCM]

Parent is a troll.

Check the link, and the correct name is Dag-Erling Smørgrav.

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

I know they are fucking slow but I use mini-itx computers, no fans, external fanless PSU...

All that you want for a quiet computer (apart from performance).

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.zalmanusa.com/usa/product/view.asp?idx= 64&code=020
(no affiliation, I just like quiet.)
A totally noiseless heatpipe based system. Supposedly good for anything up to a p4 3.2 and an ATI 9700/GF FX 5700 class machine. No moving parts (except the hard drive) equals no noise, and a Seagate drive will only run you 25dB, which is about ambient room noise in a modern house.

Re:CPU Market

[twbecker]

What can't you do with a 2.4Ghz HT Intel CPU?

Why does it have to be an Intel chip? I like to think I'm pretty unbiased when it comes to CPUs, but the fact of the matter is that the A64 architecture is clearly superior to that space heater Intel calls Prescott. Intel still holds a slim advantage in some encoding tests, but that's about it. I'm not trying to troll, I'm just curious why you chose to mention a 2.4Ghz HT Intel chip when TFA is about AMD. . .

Re:CPU Market

[Selecter]

I found the tidbit contained in the recent paper launch of the Freescale multicore G4 chip very interesting: that each core can and will be able to run it's own operating system.

Can you say "Death to Virtual PC" and "OS X and Windows on the same computer", boys and girls?

How about : "Apple will jump on this like a big dog?"

tnxknewucouldbi

Re:CPU Market

[twbecker]

You should look into an Athlon 64. They support Cool & Quiet technology, which basically just underclocks the CPU when it's idle. My 3000+ (2Ghz clockspeed) runs at 1Ghz most of the time. And the fans spindown accordingly. When you start up an application, the chip adjusts so quickly that you can't tell any difference in performance. Anyway, something to think about.

Re:CPU Market

[JDevers]

The cache and TLBs are there because of slow RAM, but the pipelining and branch prediction isn't really. Now if you removed pipelining you would remove the need for branch prediction, but you would have to have 1 cycle memory for that to be faster. Even L2 cache isn't 1 cycle (hell, L1 cache isn't always 1 cycle). If you removed these things from a CPU though, it would run FASTER not slower (GHz wise at least) and so the RAM would need to run even that much faster to keep up.

Re:CPU Market

[twbecker]

How will it be the death of Virtual PC? Do you think Microsoft is gonna port Windows to the PPC?

Re:CPU Market

[TellarHK]

Sounds to me like the big things people are looking for here are all iMac features. The noise level is really, really low, and the CPU may not be at bus speed, but it's running at half of the bus which certainly can't hurt.

The only thing you don't get with an iMac is Windows, so is this a good thing or bad?

Disclaimer: I have one of everything on my desk(s).

Re:CPU Market

[Khali]

That's missing the point IMHO. I don't want to pay for an ultra-fast, ultra-heating CPU I don't need and then pay (and how much!) again for a case that makes it usable.

What I want is a CPU which doesn't heat in the first place. Same for graphics card and power supply. It's still easy to find fanless graphics adapters. CPUs exist but are not widely available. Fanless power supplies are very rare and expensive, but I guess it could be better if all components in the computers were designed for low power consumption and dissipation instead of top speed. There is a market and I just hope that companies like Transmeta (or others, even Intel or AMD) won't miss it.

I still couldn't read the article BTW :(

Re:CPU Market

[Selecter]

Why would you need to emulate a op system when you can just run the real thing on one core at full speed? The announcement didnt give many details, but it expressly said "different op system on each core" which would make not much sense to crow about if they were, like, talking about freaking FreeBSD on one and OS X on the other?

Re:CPU Market

[Jason Hood]

I have heard this as long as I can remember. Can we browse the web in opengl at 1600x1200 with video commercials in stereo everywhere instead instead of images? Nope, so we will continue upping the clock speed =)

Re:CPU Market

[krunk7]

I'd like to second the grandparent's post. . .Especially for your server. PPC's have a much lower clock speed and power consumption than a similarly fast PC. My server is a 300mhz G3 running linux and it's quite as can be, even quiter than a 450mhz amd/pentium chip and quit a bit faster.

Re:CPU Market

[twbecker]

Why would you need to emulate a op system when you can just run the real thing on one core at full speed?

Virtual PC doesn't emulate an OS, it emulates an architechture. Windows can't run on anything but an x86 PC.

. . .but it expressly said "different op system on each core" which would make not much sense to crow about if they were, like, talking about freaking FreeBSD on one and OS X on the other?

Why not? Are they not separate OSs?

Re:CPU Market

[hb253]

Computer noise also happens to be one of my pet peeves. So I built myself a PC using quiet parts.

I bought the CPU cooler and power supply from http://www.endpcnoise.com and I forget where I got the hard disk with fluid bearing drive.

It's very very quiet. So much so that I can leave the PC running (it's in my bedroom) and not be kept awake by fan and hard disk noise. I couldn't so that with my old PC.

Re:CPU Market

[sofakingon]

Because I have had a 2.4Ghz HT P4 for the last year and a half and I don't see a need to upgrade in the forseeable future ;)

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty much a good thing. Unless you are a hard core gamer, you probably won't miss Windows one bit. Though the Mac gaming market is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. Aspyr, Microsoft (yes, Microsoft!) and Westlake port a lot of games over to the Mac these days, not all but quite a few of the better ones. It's not the one year+ delay that it used to be either, often we get games maybe 2-3 months behind instead of over a year late, and sometimes even at the same time as on the PC.

Would be nice if we got a few more porting houses, which would increase the number of games coming over. It must be fairly profitable because porting houses like Aspyr and Westlake have been doing it for 5 years+ now and they continue to pump out high powered Mac games like crazy.

Re:CPU Market

[Junks Jerzey]

What can't you do with a 2.4Ghz HT Intel CPU?

Very little. Even things like compressing video aren't so bad any more, as long as you're not compressing giant movies. And you can write code in Python or Lisp or your language of choice and have it run light lightning.

What do you guys think will be the next revolution in the CPU (or GPU, for that matter) market?

Processors that are less general purpose. GPUs are getting amazing boosts by being very specialized. Even shaders have narrow instruction sets. But a desktop CPU is designed to "run C," which is a much broader task. People building custom FPGA-based chips have proven that they can outperform high-end processors while only running at a fraction of the clockspeed. I fully expect that we're going to start to see processors--possibly even from hobbyists--optimized for running Python or other high-level languages, processors with built-in support for type tag checks and garbage collection (hmmm...sounds a bit like a Lisp machine, doesn't it?).

I should also mention that there has been activity outside of the Intel and AMD world that most people are familiar with. Remember, there are other processor families out there. And for an extreme example, there are the crazy "minimal instruction set" Forth chips from Chuck Moore.

Re:CPU Market

[MemoryDragon]

Sheesh, I wouldnt even improve the CPU for now, there are so many bottlenecks which basically drag the whole speed down, Ram like somebody mentioned, the bus system and a myriad of other things. I will give you an example. I have a pretty fast machine at home (Athlon 2400) recently I had to install one of my programs at a customers server which basically was a souped up RS6000 with a Power4 processor. Although the processor was slower than my development machine. The overall integration and quality of components and design was so good, that it literally ran circles around my machine, (Starting Tomcat with the webapp on my machine, around 7 seconds, on this machine 1.5, and that one also was hosting an oracle 9 server and other stuff) The current PC architecture is like having a ferrari engine in a schoolbus with breaks on. PCI-X and other stuff will help to a certain degree, but Intel does not have too many incentives to improve performance by architecture improvement unless they are forced to.

Re:CPU Market

[Waffle Iron]

What can't you do with a 2.4Ghz HT Intel CPU?

I'd like to be able to use the PovRay ray tracer as a game engine at 70FPS, but that's just me.

Re:CPU Market

[kidlinux]

I agree with what you say 100%.

If you're looking for a silent system, try the VIA micro-itx formfactor with 1ghz cpu. Not only can you build a very quiet system, but you can build a really small one too. 17cmx17cm full-featured motherboard.

I think the current trends are moving towards small and silent. Personally I'm tired of seeing big box computers. Shoebox (even a bit smaller) size is where it's at.

Re:CPU Market

[TilJ]

Reminds me of one of my favourite quotes from the monastary:

CP/M-86 *screams* on a PII/400.
-- Dave Brown, a.s.r.
I would think so. The whole floppy image will fit in the L-II cache.
-- Mark Atwood, in reply

Re:CPU Market

[renoX]

And how do you think RAM access time can be improved?
Where is the time lost that could be regained?

"Make it faster" is just wishful thinking, apparently it is not so easy: RAM with low latency cost much more than other regular RAM..

The only "easy" way to improve significantly RAM access I can think of would be to bundle CPU and RAM in the same package, but this limits upgrade of course..

Re:CPU Market

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Can we browse the web in opengl at 1600x1200 with video commercials in stereo everywhere instead instead of images?

No, thank Bob.

Re:CPU Market

[shokk]

Redundant hardware. A chip that big is going to have a lot of flaws and we won't be able to just throw out chips that have the flaws. The chips will have to fail self-test and repair before they can be considered unusable.

Re:CPU Market

[Dun Malg]

Sounds to me like the big things people are looking for here are all iMac features.

The iMac is quiet, but it's a "turnkey" system without any serious expandability. I have three network cards, a Hauppage vid cap card, and three monitors. The iMac is not suitable for these things. The LCD iMac is further unsuitable for anyone who requires accurate color representation.

Re:CPU Market

[AndroidCat]

Sure. Throw GEM on top for the GUI, and it would still fit.

The problem with code size is that it's not only out of hand, it's accelerating. "For the want of a nail, the kingdom was linked."

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

Wonder how many decades it'll be till we're not talking about it, but instead posting to Slashdot about it?

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

The overall integration and quality of components and design was so good, that it literally ran circles around my machine

It literally ran circles around your machine? Did it physically stand up on its legs and orbit around your machine under its own power?

Re:CPU Market

[TrancePhreak]

The amount of noise a computer makes is not as directly related to the gHz meter you use. I recently went from 1gHz to 3.2 and my system got quieter along the way. The default fan that came with the CPU was broken or something. It made terrible noise. So I buckled up and payed for a better one. Zalman Copper something or other. Extremely quiet and seems like it maybe cools better.

Re:CPU Market

[Phreakiture]

Energy efficiency.

At the present, the cost of energy is on the rise, and I would be shocked if this rise in energy cost slows; more likely it will accellerate as we dig deeper into the reserves of oil.

Via have been working on highly efficient CPU's. Presently, a Via EPIA MII 12000 motherboard can be had with a built-on 1.2GHz processor. It's no speed demon, but it's no slouch, either. It is reported to draw 31 watts off of the power supply under load, versus 75+ for MoBo's with Intel/AMD chips.

As an added bonus, less energy in equals less heat out. This reduces the cooling requirements, and, by extension, can make the computer quieter (which ties in with another comment in this thread)

As yet another added bonus, these MoBo's are small and have most of the things I can think of wanting to put into a computer already on them.

No, I'm not affiliated with Via, I'm just a happy customer.

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

Silence!!!

I'm quite fed up with these noisy computers!

Re:CPU Market

[Minwee]

You can get a quiet or even silent PC using off the shelf parts, if you look for them.

CPUs like the Pentium III can be underclocked and underpowered to the point that they work just fine without a fan. The VIA C3 is a Socket 370 / P-III compatable processor designed for low power and fanless operation. Check out the mini-itx motherboards for examples of these in operation.

Most video cards don't need a fan at all, although passively cooled cards can still heat up the interior of your case. It's doubtful that you really need the absolute latest and most powerfull leaf-blower video card on your home server.

Hard drives and power supplies are the other big sources of noise. Hard drives noise is noticable because it comes and goes, while power supplies need to push all the heat that those passively cooled components have been producing out of the case. A well made drive seated on noise absorbing padding, rather than bolted directly onto a steel frame, can be reduced to a low, cricket-like chirping noise while large, slower case fans can take a lot of the load off of the PSU without raising noise levels significantly. Take a look around Silent PC Review for more on this topic, or just look for a retailer in your area who carries quiet PC parts.

I have been slowly replacing all the computers around my home with silent parts over the last few years, and the difference is stunning. Just last week I needed to replace a power supply and used a spare that I had sitting on a shelf -- It sounded like a jet engine compared to everything around it. If that's the kind of noise that's coming out of your server, then I understand your frustration. You don't need to turn to rare, high tech prototypes from military labs to quiet down your PC -- All you need now is to shop around a bit.

Re:CPU Market

[CaptainPinko]

Considering that you can get an Itanium with 9Mb of cache, I'd say getting an OS in there shouldn't be too difficult. Hell, you could probably get a NetBSD kernel in there a bash session and do a few shell scripts w/o any RAM.

Re:CPU Market

[gid]

I recently upgraded from a Athlon XP 2600+ (thoroughbred) to an Athlon 64 3400+ (newcastle). The difference is simply amazing, easily twice as fast, at least when comparing compile times, which is a big bonus for me doing java development. Everything else is just all around snappier. The new SATA 10k rpm WD Raptor drive doesn't hurt anything either. Oh ya, and my system plays doom3 better now as well. :)

-- gid

Re:CPU Market

[YE]

You should take a look at the Mini-ITX or Micro-ITX based systems from VIA. Although not as sexy from technological perspective (i.e. Linus didn't work for them), they are generally faster than Transmeta CPUs, and very, very low-power.

Re:CPU Market

[noselasd]

>And how do you think RAM access time can be improved?
I don't know, that's for the advanced people at Intel,etc. to research.
>Where is the time lost that could be regained?
Given that the speed of the ram bus is typically a fraction of the
CPU (heard of 133MHz SDRAM ? 333MHz and some above are common now though), I'd say someone ought to put more research in this area rather
than squeezing a few more MHz out of a CPU.

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of quiet seems to equate to big-buck specialty items in the computer parts business. I have three computers in a small dorm room at this time. One features an EPIA 5000 and a 4-port ethernet card and what makes this machine particularly quiet is the power supply with 120mm fan. Sound level is no higher than ambient at 1m. Nice setup. Now, there is also a Dell PowerEdge 400SC with a 2.4GHz P4 and one with a 2GHz Celeron. I am sitting about 1m away from these machines and cannot hear them. My home-built Athlon XP 2400+ system, however, is loud as hell even with quiet fans and a large heatpipe to negate the need for a fan on the G4-Ti4200. I only use this machine for games now.

The problem? Cases for home-built machines are designed to work with almost any combination of hardware and it shows in the final result. The Dells use a plastic air duct to direct air through a large CPU heatsink and both of the fans (one 92mm fan for the CPU, one for the power supply) seem to be thermally-controlled so unless you are wasting power all day running SETI, the machines are very quiet. Yes, there actually is value to having a system that was actually engineered to some extent and not just bolted together with commodity parts.

Anyway, if you don't need speed, the fanless VIA boards are nice and again, the power supplies with single 120mm fans are nice and quiet. I think there are fanless boards available up to 600MHz and potentially more if you can manage to install a large heatsink like one of the Zalman flower coolers.

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd second this. My A64 3200+ runs at 2.2GHz and 45C when its needed, but 1GHz and 30C when its idling. So, unless I'm running some intensive simulation or shooting at someone, its (as the PR goes) cool and quiet.

Re:CPU Market

[JamieF]

>I fully expect that we're going to start to see processors--possibly even from hobbyists--optimized for running Python or other high-level languages

Great, and then in 12 months someone will release an emulator for this type of chip that runs on industry standard processors at the same speed. Intel did a great job in the 90s of heading off all sorts of coprocessor based designs in favor of "do it all on the CPU". Hardware crypto accelerators (for SSL) looked kinda sorta like a good idea for about a year but they couldn't compete with Moore's law.

Unless someone can come along with a mass-market coprocessor like you describe which has a clear price advantage, then this sort of thing will remain a curiosity.

Re:CPU Market

[Blakey Rat]

You could buy an iMac G5... as far as I know, they're either really close to silent, or silent... if you don't mind a slow-ass machine, you can go back and get one of those CRT iMacs which have no fans at all. Or a G4 Cube, also with no fans at all. Stay away from the G5 tower, though, those are pretty noisy... they try, and they're quieter than most computers at that speed, but they're still pretty noisy.

Also, most laptops can run without a fan for hours on end. Get a good laptop, plug it into your monitor and mouse and keyboard and go to town... another advantage is that you can unplug it if you wanna take it somewhere.

Re:CPU Market

[david_reese]

The iMac is quiet, but it's a "turnkey" system without any serious expandability. I have three network cards, a Hauppage vid cap card, and three monitors. The iMac is not suitable for these things.

That's why we retired our old laptop as a low power server (it's great, quiet, and only turns on with local activity), added a NAS, and now use our work laptops and plan on a shiney new iMac LCD for the living room. iTunes, pictures, wifi, etc are all served by low power devices (incl. the laptop server).

But to each his own... if you need a workstation, then an iMac is a bad idea. If you need a quiet machine for regular home usage (or do your heavy lifting elsewhere), it's pretty cool.

Re:CPU Market

[NerveGas]

There are still apps that will suck up every CPU cycle you can throw at them, and still want more. Look at video compression. When you've got hours of video to run through, every extra gigahertz counts!

: )

steve

Re:CPU Market

[prockcore]

If you're looking for a silent system, try the VIA micro-itx formfactor with 1ghz cpu. Not only can you build a very quiet system, but you can build a really small one too. 17cmx17cm full-featured motherboard.

I have an Epia-V for my arcade cabinet. It's 1ghz, it's nearly quiet (the 1ghz has a tiny fan that's similar to the fans found on those radeon 8500 cards), and the motherboard+cpu cost just $80.

But the best part is that since it draws so little power you can use a fanless PSU. These things are small as well, they look like daughterboards and they mount directly to the motherboard.

Re:CPU Market

[Solosoft]

The problem with Intel changing the way CPU's work is compatablitity. On a Intel or AMD chip you can still run x86 games from the 8086 days.

All the newer CPU's are is an overclocked 386 with some fancys added (MMX and SSE for example). If Intel or AMD where to come out with a totally new architecture what would you do with 99.99% of the code that is out there. You would need to re-write every piece of software out there (unless you did emulation which would totally break the point of "starting from scratch").

The new AMD 64bit CPU's are a good start to try to "push" away from the x86 market but I think x86 is fit to stay for ALONG time.

Just my $0.02

Re:CPU Market

[renoX]

> I don't know, that's for the advanced people at Intel,etc. to research.

Intel doesn't make DRAM anymore, but anyway what makes you think DRAM producers haven't already researched this topic?

Maybe the fact they are not successfull is because the law of physic (aka speed of light) is not helping?

> Given that the speed of the ram bus is typically a fraction of the CPU (heard of 133MHz SDRAM ? 333MHz and some above are common now though)

On one part you talk about RAM access time, on the other part you talk about the frequency of the access bus, sorry but that's two different thing: when Intel supported Rambus their RDRAM has much increased bus bandwith, but the RAM access time was longer!
Because CPU RAM are external link, it is much harder to increase frequency, but a way to increase the frequency is to go serial (like RAMBUS did) but there are usually serialisation delay so this means *increased* latency!

The thing which *could* help for bandwith is "edge connected" chip (Sun is researching this, there was an article on /. on this quite some time ago) with connexion of CPU and RAM through this edge of the chip not through traces on the motherboard, but this is much more likely to be usefull for CPU, L3 interface not for DRAM (at first).

For access time, the only real possibility would be a new type of RAM such as MRAM but while they claim SRAM-like access time (not sure if it isn't just marketing speak), density is way lower than DRAM currently and it won't come cheap at first: this is a major development!

Re:CPU Market

[sam.union]

>Its like buying a car that does 200mph,
>but then only doing the school run in it.

I agree with you, except for the analogy. This does happen. How many corvettes do you see on the street? or, if you lower 200 hundred to 150 then just about any new, sporty car will do that. And really who needs to go over 75? (85 if you live in montana) But that dosen't stop those cars from selling.

Re:CPU Market

[ameoba]

meh. If you got a decent case with a decent quality PSU you wouldn't have a noise problem. If you want to save $20 and not get a decent case/PSU you're going to end up with a noisy POS.

An Antec SLK3700 that makes a negligible amount of noise is only about $70. The current generation of stock CPU coolers from both AMD and Intel are pretty quiet but for about $10-15 you can get something with a big slow fan that makes even less noise. You can get decent video cards fanless (Radeon 9600 and GeForce 5700s) in the $100-150 range.

The only excuse for a noisy computer is that you chose poor parts.

Re:CPU Market

[Matt_Joyce]

Idle ? What that then ?

Re:CPU Market

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, new processors are soooo much faster than the old ones... well, AMD newbies are faster at least. Intel's really suckin hind tit now... Bleeding edge has never been faster.

Re:CPU Market

[Rob Simpson]

I'm looking for one of the 35 watt Athlon 64 mobiles. With a good heatsink they should be quiet and fast. Unfortunately, no one seems to be shipping them to Canada. Supposedly they can work in desktop socket 754 motherboards, but the heatsink can be a problem (the chip is too low, but apparently the thermalright bolt-on ones work). There are also supposed to be 25 watt Athlon 64 and Sempron mobiles coming out next year.

There are also Pentium M motherboards, but they are hard to find and expensive. The VIA C3 1 GHz runs very cold, but runs slower than a ~500mhz P3. Also, the mini-itx board version has a rather loud fan - but it also comes in a socket 370 version, so you can put a big socket A heatsink on it and run it fanless - if you don't mind the lack of speed. I did this for a while, but it drove me nuts. So I put in a cheap Celeron 1.3 GHz (which has 256k cache, unlike the slower versions) and plugged in the cpu fan with a Zalman fan speed controller set to minimum. With a Zalman PSU and a Seagate hard drive, the system is barely audible if there is no other noise in the room. If I were to go totally fanless, I'd put in a laptop hard drive instead. (These guys had fanless PSUs in for $145 Canadian, which isn't all that bad, but they're sold out.)

Re:CPU Market

[Luminous Coward]

[I want] low power dissipation. This value has dramatically increased in the past few years, in the name of the top speed race, but at the price of our tranquility.

This is most definitely not true, e.g. take the different Athlon cores, and look at the fastest revision.

K7 core = 50 W @ 700 MHz (250 nm process)

K75 core = 65 W @ 1 GHz (180 nm)

Thunderbird = 72 W @ 1.4 GHz (180 nm)

Palomino = 72 W @ 1.73 GHz (180 nm)

Thoroughbred = 68.3 W @ 2.17 GHz (130 nm)

Barton = 76.8 W @ 2.2 GHz (130 nm)

You say you would settle for even a 1 GHz CPU. Have you considered Athlon XP-M CPUs?

AMD presented low-voltage (1.05-1.25V core voltage) Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 1800+, 1700+, 1600+, 1500+ and 1400+, based on Thoroughbred core, featuring ~25W TDP, and Barton-based 1800+ in microPGA package mainly for ultra light notebooks.

For performance notebook market AMD announced Barton-based Athlon XP-M 2400+ and 2500+ with 512Kb L2 cache along with AMD Athlon XP-M 2600+, 2500+, 2400+, 2200+ and 2000+ in OPGA package with 256Kb L2 cache. AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ and 2200+ are now available in both traditional mobile (~35W TDP), and desktop (~70W TDP) series.

In France, you can buy an Athlon XP-M 2200+ for 90 EUR. In the US, you can buy a 2400+ (1.80GHz, Barton core, Socket A, 266 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache) for $80.

Re:CPU Market

[xethair]

Speaking of which, could you fit and run an entire OS from cache? is it even possible?

I think L4 claims that as a feature, although it's only a microkernel, not an "entire OS"--but it is even a modern system... Of course, you don't actually want the whole OS in the cache, just the frequently used code paths.

Re:CPU Market

[Llama_STi]

Good call - and to go one better: Nano TX! I'm just waiting for these things to speed up a bit then drop it in whatever I feel like using for a case - maybe a SuperFamicom, Turbo-Grafx 16, or maybe even a beautiful Dreamcast! :D

Re:CPU Market

[Llama_STi]

err.. NanoITX rather. typos :P

You think...

[Alwin Henseler]

2500+ should be enough for everyone?

Re:You think...

[goneutt]

no speed will ever be enough as long as you can lord your proc over someone else's.

Remember, increasing processor abilities are the key to designed obsolecence in computers. That, and M$ bloat ware

Yes..

[manavendra]

..but does it still double up as a comfy portable heater for you, like its predecessors?!

Re:Yes..

[ExKoopaTroopa]

you mean like a air cooled dual G5 ?

Re:Yes..

[cbreaker]

You're the troll - why do you assume all PC's have 9 fans?

Re:Yes..

[cbreaker]

Actually, my Barton 2500+ doesn't get nearly as hot as my older AthlonXP 2200+. The 2500+ runs great at 2100Mhz over the normal 1800, which is why I had gotten it.

But, it still is hot. Fortunately, with a good heat sink (I have this CoolerMaster one in there, lots of little fins) you don't need a monster fan to keep it cool. The thing spins around 3200RPM most of the time, only bumping up to about 5000 (which is still quiet on this fan) during the most grueling work.

The next CPU I'll be getting is one of the Athlon64's or the Opterons. These cpus run a lot cooler and have a heat spreader built in (finally.)

Re:Yes..

[Selecter]

I dont. Put 9 fans in a PC and it would be - hell, knock it down to 4 fans, and it's still 3X louder. I own both, and my PC with a Aeroflow and 3 fans is.

My point is: You dont own a G5, so dont make assumptions about it. You dont know. Nobody that owns one would ever make that statement.

Re:Yes..

[numark]

PCs don't have 9 fans because they take the position that it's better to cool everything in the case with one or two fans, even if that means having the fans at a high RPM and, thus, creating lots of noise. The only reason the G5 needs 9 fans is because it cools each of 4 areas separately. There's no need to create noise to cool the drive bays when the only thing that's warm at a certain time are the processors, and vice versa.

Re:Yes..

[mefus]

The only reason the G5 needs 9 fans is because it cools each of 4 areas separately.

No, there is more involved than that. Airflow in the G5 case is an engineered factor in the cooling of its components. The very curves in the barriers aid in the efficient and directed flow of air through the components of the computer. The fans are also controlled via heat sensor input (but this is irrelevant as PCs often have this as well) and the result is precise and controlled applicaton of airflow to keep the computer cool while keeping the noise at a minimum. PCs, in contrast, merely try to keep the air moving around each component, and circulation relies on displacement by the powersupply fan and (sometimes) supplemental fans on the case. There is no regard for flow outside of rules of thumb.

That being said, the (smallish) room of my office grows noticeably warmer when my dual G5 is working through a problem.

Re:Yes..

[numark]

I suppose I was oversimplifying the issue a little bit. For the record, I'm a very happy owner of a dual-2.0 Power Mac G5, and yes, I have noticed the same thing about the room getting warmer, especially considering that I live in a closet-size dorm room.

Re:Yes..

[cbreaker]

You can't generalize like that - it's like saying all people of race look the same.

Do you know how many differen't PC's there are? It's countless. Among those are quiet computers that are "engineered" to cool the components and keep noise to a minimum. I'd also be willing to bet that the number of such PC's sold are still higher then the number of macs being sold, even considering that they do not make up the majority of PC's sold.

Again, you can't generalize, it's ignorant and sounds very much like something a zealot would say - you're not an ignorant zealot are you?

Re:Yes..

[cbreaker]

My Opteron system runs fantastic with one cpu fan that you can barely hear - the HDD is more audible.

So, what's the problem with PC's again? And don't even say "most PC's" because that doesn't cut it and that's not what you insinuate.

Hell, I don't know what the big deal is. Macs are just as loud as any PC. It's only the super-home-brew-crazy-overclocked machines people build that are loud. And I'm glad I have that option at all, if I wanted to do it.

Re:Yes..

[mefus]

Says you.

Generalizing is a perfectly valid mental exercise.

I'm not being a Mac zealot (or whatever notion you've got in your head) either, I'm just saying the Mac G5 desktop has airflow engineering. I have multiple desktop PCs at home, and NONE of them have carefully engineered airflow. As a generality it is perfectly valid to say PCs do or don't have X, where X is something Apple computers DO have.

Re:Yes..

[cbreaker]

Ahh yes, you have multiple desktop PC's at home. Therefore you are able to judge the rest of the billion PC's out there. I see.

Any PC you buy "off the shelf" these days have condieration to noise. I dare you to pick up a dell or acer box and try to hear the so called loud noise. They're essentially silent.

All you guys here trying to blindly defend your Macs are really sounding like a broken record. I never said Macs were bad, or loud. I simply said that all PC's are not - and ten Mac zealots jumped on me saying that they are. It's pretty funny, actually.

I'll repeat again - if you have a crazy super home-brew overclocked PC from hell, it's bound to be filled with fans and loud. But these machines will be pushing the envelope for performance, and that's not something you even have the option to do with a Mac. You're stuck with what apple hands you - but if you could, it would be just as loud.

Plus. One of my machins is one of those home-brew crazy boxes, and truthfully, it's not that loud. The CPU has a very quiet fan, the three case fans are essentially silent, and even the video boards' dual fans would take a special microphone to hear. It's much more quiet then you'd think and still allows you to hear the clock on the wall tick.

Just because john-doe puts in a 10,000RPM CPU fan so he can get that extra 100Mhz out of the thing, or because nVidia once released a really loud video card, DOESN'T MEAN ALL PC'S ARE LOUD.

Re:Yes..

[mefus]

I don't know what the fuck you got your panties in a bunch about, but it sure isn't about anything I have said. Go find your brilliantly engineered PC and rub it on your crotch, do whatever you want, because I don't give a fuck about you and you are bothering me about things that don't exist in my statements.

Freak.

Re:Yes..

[cbreaker]

You've proved my point about you being an ignorant zealot. Well done!

Haha, who's the freak..

2500+

[Eeknay]

The Barton 2500+ is probably the best chip that AMD have ever released. It was cheap, it performed well, and it was an overclocker's dream. It's not at all uncommon to find many people who have a 2500+ and have overclocked it to 3200+ speeds with nothing more than a stock cooler, without crashing.

The Semprons, however, are rather lacklustre, and I'm nto sure why they released them for the Socket A platform... the XP's are the same price and perform better. The only Sempron anyone would be remotely interested in is the Socket 754 Sempron 3000+, which gves the same performance as an Athlon 64 2800+, but without the 64bit compatability (i.e. no Windows XP 64 edition).

Re:2500+

[IAR80]

Not only that my barton 2500+ is overclocable in 3200+ but I can also lower the voltage to 1.45 for lower consumption and heat dissipation.

Re:2500+

[Quijybo]

Exactly that config here (2500+ at 3200+). Runs at ~30 degrees c with the stock fan and is 100% stable.

Re:2500+

[Selecter]

My best OC with my 2500+ system is 2366 Actual Mhz.

That's a 533 Mhz OC, raising the core voltage 5% and using a Vantec Aeroflow HSF with AS3. It's been running that way for over a year now. Temps max @ 41C @ 100%.

At this rate I wont need to go buy another Wintel system until Doom 4 for 64 bit Windows comes out :D

Re:2500+

[cbreaker]

I remember when I got one myself, I had to look to see the CPU from the vendor (was a computer show) to see what week the chip was made in. Apparently past week 42 or something, they weren't overclockable.

I think the chip makers do this on purpose sometimes. Every once in awhile, let a few chips through that are overclockable to keep the overclockers happy.

Re:2500+

[Dielectric]

The Sempron is basically a marketing ploy to use old silicon. The idea was to release a very low-cost device for third-world markets. AMD can build parts with the T-bred core by the boatload (mostly because die yield is better on a low-cache device) for pennies. It isn't exactly intended for domestic desktops. I have no idea why it would be included in a head-to-head with a Barton core, other than that perhaps the reviewer has his head firmly insterted up his rectum. As he found, it doesn't compete performance-wise, but it's cheap. Shit, I coulda told you that, and I don't even have a fancy website!

Re:2500+

[Anonymous Coward]

The 3100+ Sempron doesn't perform the same as an Athlon64 2800+, minus the 64-bit capabilities. It only has 256KB L2 cache (like it's socket-a siblings) while the 2800+ has 512KB L2 cache. This causes cache-intensive applications to perform much better on the 2800+ than the sempron. But, they do share the same clock speed, which will make clockspeed-intensive applications perform similarily.

Re:2500+

[Eeknay]

For clarification, when I say "perform the same/better", I meant for gaming purposes. I can't remember results for normal applications, but you're probably right.

Re:2500+

[AndroidCat]

Does that hold true for the Barton 2600+ as well? (I'd RTFA, but /.'ed.)

Re:2500+

[Mr Guy]

Sure, with luck. The big difference being you already paid more for the chip so you don't get as much bang for your buck. This goes back to the basic concept of chips and bins, which as far as I know is accurate.

The idea being that all chips with a given core revision come off the same lines. Silicon growing being what it is, they don't all come off the same quality. They test the chips to see what they can handle reliably and toss them into a bin. The catch being sometimes they have to put them into a lower bin than they deserve because they need more of that chip. 2500+ for whatever reason seems to be a great breaking point, probably because of price and public perception. People end up buying more 2500+ so they have to put chips that deserve to be in say the 2600+ or 3000+ bin in the 2500+ bin to meet demand. They DO put locks on these chips to try and keep them closer to 2500+ but the locks are fairly ineffective.

So with chips and bins being what they are, the customer gets to decide whether or not to gamble on their chip being one of the ones that deserved to be in a faster bin. It's only promised to run at the speed on the bin, but there is a statistical probability associated that it can actually run much faster. The higher the number on the chip and the less popular a chip is, the more likely it won't run much faster than the speed on the box.

Re:2500+

[evilviper]

It's not at all uncommon to find many people who have a 2500+ and have overclocked it to 3200+ speeds with nothing more than a stock cooler, without crashing.

I can say the same for my 2000+, well, almost. Can't quite get it to 2GHz (like the 3200+) but about 1950mhz is close enough.

The Semprons, however, are rather lacklustre

I just took a look, and the 1GHz Sempron is extremely low power. At 20watts, you could run it fanless.

Now, that's not great news for the overclocker crowd, but it's great for the low-power, silent, embedded crowd.

Then again, that's just one processor, the rest seem pretty high power.

Re:2500+

[indiechild]

Not sure which country you're in, but here in Australia it looks like they're withdrawing the Athlon XPs and replacing them with Semprons... the A64 range is of course the "pro" range. So these Semprons aren't exactly intended for third world markets -- damn, can people in those countries even afford CPUs like this??

Semprons are the new Durons, essentially.

I also noticed that the prices for AMD CPUs have gone up recently, with the introduction of the Semprons. My first thought was "WTF?"...

Re:First Fanboy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have the Athlon 64? 64FX? or the regular Athlons? I'm heavily considering AMD for my upcoming desktop mainly because of the lower costs of AMD processors vs. the high priced Inthingtel.

For those who don't know...

[Silverlancer]

The Mobile Barton is basically the cream of the crop in terms of Bartons. They take the chips that will run the highest speeds on the lowest voltages, and sell them as Mobiles. Of course you can buy one, put it in a desktop PC, and they will often overclock massively--most 2500+s easily hit 2.5Ghz and will often reach 2.6-2.8Ghz... on pretty standard air cooling! The only problem with this is getting RAM that will run that fast... in which case two 256MB sticks of BH-5 running at 2-2-2-5 are your best bet :).

Re:For those who don't know...

[IAR80]

Mobile Bartons are just normal production Bartons that are tested and work in 1.45. No othe differences. You can get if you are lucky a normal Barton with the same features for much less money.

Re:For those who don't know...

[imsabbel]

Errr, and how is selecting the best bartons for mobile use (by testing if they work with low volatages) a contradiction to mobile bartons being the creme of the crop in terms of bartons?

Re:For those who don't know...

[IAR80]

It is not

Re:For those who don't know...

[Silverlancer]

If you are *very* lucky. That's because they take out the Mobile Bartons from the batch of regular Bartons, making it much harder to get a lucky Barton. And the mobiles are actually not much more expensive--you can get them for just 60 dollars, and thats not bad for a guaranteed sweet overclocker.

Re:For those who don't know...

[IAR80]

I think I got my Barton before the mobile Barton was "invented".

Re:For those who don't know...

[chhamilton]

Another poster had mentioned that they are identical to stock Barton's, but more expensive. In my experience they've only been about $10-$15 more expensive (I've got an XP-M 2500+), and well worth the price to guarantee that you've got a 'cream of the crop' processor. Heck, in the article they only quote a $0.50 price difference!

Not only are they good for overclocking, but they're good for the opposite use too. Everybody complains about loud computers; why not get one of these mobile processors instead? I was able to run at normal clock speeds with an old (and quiet) HSF from an AMD 1.0GHz and still see temperatures below 40 degrees Celsius. Mine runs in a home-theater PC so top on my list was quiet, cool, and able to run in a small case (ie: with constrained fan dimensions). And it's done just that, while at the same time providing plenty of horsepower for real-time HDTV quality MPEG2 decoding, etc.

Re:For those who don't know...

[arose]

To think that I had the choice and took the "normal"... Why didn't google tell me to get the Mobile? :'(

Re:For those who don't know...

[aka1nas]

Regular Bartons are also multiplier locked, however, and the multiplier cannot be changed via BIOS. Mobile chips have remained unlocked, mainly because the powerNow feature requires itself to be able to change the multiplier. Also, I don't recall any bartons being produced with SOI. Mobile Bartons are phycsically the same as desktop barton cores.

Come on now

[lachlan76]

or perhaps our wives' strong grip on our wallets

I get the feeling that this isn't the case for most readers of that site ;)

Thinking about an upgrade

[Echnin]

On my Windows PC I still have an Athlon XP 1600+ I bought in late 2001. I don't have a big budget, but I'd like to make some upgrades; go from 512 MB of RAM to 1 GB, add a 200 GB HDD, DVD burner, little by little. Of course, I have a Socket A motherboard (ASUS AV266-E) and I'm interested in upgrading the CPU without replacing the mobo. Is the upgrade from a 1600+ to a 2500+ worth the extra money, or should I wait and get a new motherboard with an Athlon 64 when I have the money? I'm sure I'm not the only one with an early Socket A CPU wanting to upgrade.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a mobile 2500+, an NForce-based socket-a motherboard and a decent pair of ram. You can easily get 2.3 ghz or higher on a simple overclock without overheating, and this is close to or faster than the fastest 300 dollar Athlon XP.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Avoid the processors in this article, the Sempron and Bartons all run at 333mhz, in fact the fastest processor running on a 266mhz bus I can see is a thoroughbred 2400+. I recently replaced my 1800+ with a barton 2800+, outside of games I haven't noticed a significant speedup.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[antivoid]

You guys are evil...

Another site Slashdotted :p

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[Echnin]

You're right, guess I would have to do with a 2400+. Hm, well, the computer works well enough, and it should run Doom III (I haven't had the oppurtunity to test this yet), and upgrading for the sake of upgrading is kind of lame. I guess I'll wait another year and then look at a new set of CPU/RAM/mobo at a higher FSB. For now I guess I'll just buy a Nintendo DS.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[Eeknay]

Originally AMD released two versions of the Athlon 2600+, a 333Mhz bus and a 266Mhz bus version. Whether or not you can still buy the 266 bus version is speculation, it's been a while since I've seen it.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[TechSptSucks]

Be carefull when upgrading from a kt266a mobo.

Even though your fsb is 266mhz and the fastest 266 fsb cpu is the barton mp 2800, you board may not support the voltage requirements of the different core.

On my soyo dragon+ kt266a, it only supports palomino core cpus. The fastest pally is a 2100(~1.73mhz).

If that is the case, upgrading from a 1600 to a 2100 probally would not be worth it.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the ASUS A7V266 mobo, and the lastest BIOS upgrade (1010, released a year ago) supports Athlons XP up to 2400+, I think yours is the same. But I don't know how much difference will you notice. Mine is an Athlon XP 1700+ and with gentoo it flies :D

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[doppleganger871]

I would just oc the current cpu and live with it until you can afford a compleat upgrade (cpu,mb,ram,vid).

Thanks to Fender Tucker for the elogant spelling of "compleat".

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[mrbcs]

I have 2 2400+ Tbred cpus in two different machines on Asus A7V8-X-X boards. When I use 3com net cards and Creative sound, they are very fast. (onboard sound always sucks IMHO) I still run win98 (I'm cheap and like the speed) and Photoshop 6 will load in 6 seconds from a clean boot. I also only have 256 meg ddr 333 ram.

These are fast machines though I haven't tried Doom 3 on them, they run anything else just fine.

FWIW I did find a decent speed increase moving up from the 2000+.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[MtViewGuy]

In your case, the best solution is to upgrade the RAM first, then upgrade the graphics card to a mid-range AGP 4x/8x model. The upgrade in RAM can make significant differences in system speedup especially if you keep multiple programs open.

By the way, you may want to check about upgrading the BIOS on your motherboard to the latest one available from ASUS, since you will need an updated BIOS for the system to recognize a hard drive above 120 GB in size natively.

An Athlon XP 1600+ should be fast enough to use a DVD burner, especially if you upgrade the RAM to 1 GB.

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

-An Athlon XP 1600+ should be fast enough to use a DVD burner, especially if you upgrade the RAM to 1 GB.

Until very recently I was using my dvd burner on a pentium 2 450 with no problems at all. And that system only had 256 megs of ram. Now it WOULD be accurate to say an athlon xp 1600+ should be fast enough to burn dvds while letting you still use the system. ::}

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[NerveGas]

Unless you're really in need of more CPU cycles, it might not be worth it - as you'd still be using DDR266 memory. With a new motherboard and some decent memory, a 400MHz memory clock would be the least you should be looking to get.

steve

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[NerveGas]

The one exception would be when using something like DVD Shrink. As with any video compression, it takes a lot of CPU cycles to make it happen quickly - especially if you're using 3.2 with the improved artifct-reduction stuff.

That being said, one of the most important aspects in burning is actually your IDE controller. One of my friends has a cheap no-name motherboard with an Athlon 1600 and 512 megs, but because of the crappy IDE controller, he can't sustain a read or burn faster than 2x with any drive that he tries. It used to be about 1.6x, until we fiddled with various driver versions and other settings to get it up to about 2x.

The board was actually built by one of the big manufacturers (Asus, if I recall), but it was a custom, stripped-down, cheap-as-can-be model for some small OEM, and (if I recall) wasn't ever really put into much of a production. The OEM is out of business, and Asus won't support it, so he's screwed. He got it cheap on ebay, but it's just an example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

steve

Re:Thinking about an upgrade

[toddestan]

The mobile processors are all 266Mhz FSB, as far as I know, all the way to 3000+. However, I have no idea if your motherboard will support them.

google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Fresh from the Google Cache.

Take care.
Ken.

Re:You killed it, man :p

[Anonymous Coward]

more than you can afford buddy

Site seems down: here is conclusion I saved

[jmke]

old review.. from 13/09.. not new?

So what was going to be a relatively easy summary has now become a little bit more convoluted thanks to the extreme overclocking ability of the Mobile Athlon chip.

Basically in short we can conclude the following.

- If you're looking to run at straight out of the box stock speeds, then going for the Athlon XP 2500+ should be a no brainer. The XP either beats or almost matches the Mobile chip in every benchmark and can be had at a lower price

- If however you're a tweaker, a freaker, a mad cookie eater, then by all means spend that extra four bones that is burning a hole in your pocket and pick up a Mobile Athlon chip (and as you can see above, we found it for the exact same price as the standard Barton). Even if by some chance you get a dud in the overclocking department you'll still have a chip that can easily run at stock XP speeds all the while requiring MUCH less voltage which will enable you to have a quiet if not super fast gaming system.

- Finally, if you're looking at the Sempron do it only if you absolutely cannot afford that extra ten bucks that it's going to cost you to move up to a Barton based XP processor. Though admittedly marketed at the low end internet/email usage market, AMD 2500+ Performance Rating system just doesn't hold up here. With the return of the low end Duron-esque processor let's hope AMD moves to a new naming system so as not to confuse Joe AOL who picks up a Sempron 2500+ thinking he's getting a great deal picking up the newest AMD chip at a great price to expecting it to perform at par with the regular Athlon XP chip his twelve year old kid made him promise to get.

this article made me think of a AMD Duron Applebred vs. Athlon XP Thoroughbred review we did. pretty much the same results here; Duron/Sempron not recommended, even for going "on the cheap";

Re:Site seems down: here is conclusion I saved

[Anonymous Custard]

then by all means spend that extra four bones that is burning a hole in your pocket and pick up a Mobile Athlon chip (and as you can see above, we found it for the exact same price as the standard Barton)

Don't forget the extra $20-$40 to get a good OC'ing Heatsink/Fan, since (unlike the retail barton) the mobile barton doesn't come with one.

Re:Site seems down: here is conclusion I saved

[Anonymous Coward]

About the price. There are places in the world where it is much more twisted.

In Romania the Sempron 2500+ actually is sold to the _computer_resellers_ for 77$ (US$, add 19% VAT + the reseller end-user difference, usually around 10%), which is 4 $ MORE EXPENSIVE than the Barton 2500+.

However the interesting processor seems to be the 2200+ Sempron which sells at 45$ and I have easily overclocked to a 190 FSB w/o any hint of a problem (standard voltage, actually rather low-end cooling since my ears can't handle more thar 2300rpm coolers).

Re:Site seems down: here is conclusion I saved

[gklyber]

Joe AOL is not going to notice the performance difference. He may care about the name and speed rating, but will probably not be running any benchmarks.

Re:Site seems down: here is conclusion I saved

[Laebshade]

old review.. from 13/09.. not new? Look closely at the date! It is a review only old to the cybernetic turkey from the future, brought from the year.... brought from the year... brought from the year 9999.

Re:Site seems down: here is conclusion I saved

[jmke]

13/09 is a perfect way of stating 13th September;
WTF are you blubbering about

Cache!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why cant slashdot use the nyud.net caching proxy for sites posted to the front page. It would make it actually possible to read the articles, and who knows, it may make some of the comments make sense from time to time!

Upgrade Guide

[node159]

Its worth it for gaming modern games, but its not gona get you typing word any faster...

I got my 2500+ over 6 months ago, OC'd it to the speed of a 3200+ and never looked back. If your getting a new system, go for 1Gb ram, makes a diff.

Generaly when upgrading:

Gaming PC
* Graphics card first, then CPU+Ram, then monitor ;)

Word/Browser PC
* If its >1Ghz don't bother ;), for speed up try linux, or if your not that wild try win2k for a preformance boost ;P

Server
* If you do hard number crunching or heavly loading stuff, then try 64bit, but only if there is support for your app, as for gaming; its gona happen, just not yet, you won't get your bang for buck, but you will win any 'my d*cks bigger than yours' :)

Luser

[node159]

You were expecting word to go faster....?!

ohhh wait do I hear...

But it didn't speed the interweb. :P

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

So, relative the regular one, the low-powered version uses less power, and the budget version costs less?

more from google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want more than page one...
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6

(Sorry, missed this off the original listing, didn't realise.)

take care.
love ken.

Re:You killed it, man :p

[Anonymous Coward]

With the obvious sale of front page articles, we know how they pay for it, too, don't we, buddy.

Sempron, huh?

[Anonymous Custard]

Looks ilke their webserver is running on a sempron. Or, was running.

Re:Sempron, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like a Z80

Compatability?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me a Dumb arse if you want - But Id like to know if I can drop an AMD XP 2500 (or 2400) in to a mobo that supports only upto AMD XP 2000??? Will it actualy work - But at a slower speed? (ie like an xp 2000?) Later - I will update the mobo & just plonk the new 2500 in. Hopefully this will run HL2 (Comments?) Video is an NVidia 4400 ti I ask this because 1) Im currently running 850 duron (OMG) 2) Current Jetway Mobo(V266B) supports upto Athlon XP 2000+ (Im currently happy with this mobo) 3) it's not so easy to get Athlon XP 2000+ now in Oz. 4) Im not realy interested in full upgrade. But 850mhz duron is too slow for any goodly gameing OzMan

Re:Compatability?

[TechSptSucks]

No you can't. Different cpu require diferent voltages. Upgrading from a duron 850 to an xp 2000 would be a huge improvement. You are doubling your clock speed, 1.67ghz, and increasing your fsb from 200mhz to 266mhz. Get some good corsair pc3200 ram for future upgrades.

Re:Compatability?

[doppleganger871]

It most likely isn't the different voltages, since every Socket A MB I've seen lets you use a WIDE variety of voltages. The issue would be the FSB (front side bus) and multiplier limitations. I have an older Shuttle board with the KT-266A chipset, and the XP1700 OC'ed to an XP2000 is as fast as that board will let me go. I'll have to do CPU/MB/Cooling/RAM when I upgrade.

Re:Compatability?

[Anonymous Coward]

If going to Athlon XP 2000+ Could I still use the existing 512mb of pc133 ram?

& Is "Athlon XP 2000+" the same as "Athlon XP 2000" ?

Re:Compatability?

[TechSptSucks]

No, you need ddr 266 or aka pc 2700. But I recommend using pc 3200 so you can use it in future upgrades.

Re:Compatability?

[TechSptSucks]

Even though your mobo has a fsb of 266mhz, that doesn't mean it can support a tbred, tbred b, or barton core cpu with the same FSB. When you shrink the die size of the core, it requires less juice. For example, the palomino core(original athlon xp) was built on .18u. The pally went all the way up to 2100 speeds. After that they switched to .13u cores for the tbred, tbred b, and bartons. You can't use a tbred, tbred b or barton in you kt266a mobo.

Re:Compatability?

[Laebshade]

Only if the motherboard can support the multiplier and bus speed of the XP 2500. It might work at a slower bus speed, but the multiplier is locked, so it won't run that. If you have an 850 mhz duron and the rest of the components pretty much match it, I'd say it's time for a complete upgrade.

Re:Compatability?

[toddestan]

If going to Athlon XP 2000+ Could I still use the existing 512mb of pc133 ram?

Only if you keep the same board (I assume it's a KT133 based board?). Any modern board is going to require DDR memory though.

Also, XP 2000+ and XP 2000 are the same thing.

Upgrade in progress...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though the 2500+ mobiles are great overclockers, I'm still debating what to put in my new system... Either an Athlon2500+ or Athlon64 3500+ 939. On the one hand I get a 64 bit chip, on the other hand I get an extra $350 to buy that sweet SATA RAID 5 card I've been itching for... Grr... decisions, decisions.

AMD's new motto: Confusion through choice!

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to the K.I.S.S. philosophy?

Re:AMD's new motto: Confusion through choice!

[slaker]

Yes, because Intel is WAY better in that regard.

How many different P4 2.4s have been released?

There were some on socket 423 and some on socket 478. Some for 400, 533 and 800MHz FSBs. Some support hyperthreading, some don't. Some use the Northwood core, some use Prescott. If I really want to think that way I can even say that some are Celerons and some are decent.

I don't follow Intel CPUs very closely exactly because of this. However, I'll bet if I looked for more than a moment I'd find that there have been at least ten intel chips marketed as 2.4GHz Pentium 4s.

Athlon XP out of stock

[Riddles]

The comparison between the Athlon XP and the Sempron is nice, but AMD has stopped supplying Athlon XP's under 3000+ rating. The CPU is already out of stock in some stores and others will soon follow. It won't be long before AMD stops the entire Barton line and all CPU's are based on the Athlon-64 core like the Sempron (which is Athlon-64 with 64-bit extensions disabled).

One pro for the Sempron is that it supports Cool'nQuiet, but I haven't been able to find a 2.4 patch that will support Cool'nQuiet for the Sempron yet.

Re:Athlon XP out of stock

[yeremein]

One pro for the Sempron is that it supports Cool'nQuiet, but I haven't been able to find a 2.4 patch that will support Cool'nQuiet for the Sempron yet.

Only the Socket 754 Sempron supports Cool'n'Quiet. The Socket-A Semprons are nothing more than rebadged Athlon XPs using the Thoroughbred or Thorton core, and with an inflated performance rating designed to line up with clock speeds on the Celeron D instead of the Pentium 4.

Re:Athlon XP out of stock

[ameoba]

I just recently had to RMA a burned 2500+ and they shipped back a 3000.

I'm not sure what I'll do when the market runs out of 2500+s; Unless prices drop on the 3000s, it'll be hard to find such a good CPU at a sub-$100 pricepoint to recomend to people. Celerons and Semprons are out of the running for engineers - they need the cache.

Not only slashdotted, it gave me debug output!

[minator]

Not only slashdotted, it gave me debug output! Unfortunately the slashdot server is taking sides and not letting me post it due to the lameness filter so I had to make this line longer.

Now, feel free to figure out what's wrong with thier SQL:

Database error: 0:
Query:
SELECT
title,
link,
link_image,
article_id
FROM hcw_feature_buttons

Previous Queries:

SELECT value, type FROM hcw_setting WHERE setting = 'cms_enabled' LIMIT 0,1

SELECT lastmodified FROM hcw_articles WHERE id = 239 LIMIT 0,1

SELECT
title,
category,
stuffontop,
stuffontop_image,
timestamp,
pagecount,
score,
kicksass,
sucks
FROM hcw_articles
WHERE id = 239
AND activated = 'Y'
LIMIT 0,1

SELECT
content
FROM hcw_article_pages
WHERE article_id = 239
AND pagenumber = 6
LIMIT 0,1

SELECT conclusion FROM hcw_articles WHERE id = 239 LIMIT 0,1

SELECT count(*) FROM hcw_article_award WHERE (article_id = 239) AND (award_id = 2) LIMIT 0,1

SELECT count(*) FROM hcw_article_award WHERE (article_id = 239) AND (award_id = 3) LIMIT 0,1

SELECT NULL FROM hcw_images WHERE id=3157

SELECT sizex,sizey FROM hcw_images WHERE id=3157 LIMIT 0,1

SELECT timestamp FROM hcw_images WHERE id=3157 LIMIT 0,1

SELECT title, link, link_image, article_id FROM hcw_feature_buttons

Halted.

try the 2800+ Mobile

[xot]

I use a 2800+ on my laptop and its a beauty.Its cheap and works like a beast.I have 512 mb RAM and the system can run any app you throw at it(almost).Games run good ( on my ATI RAdeon 320M), though i have'nt tried Doom3.
If your going for a laptop go for a 2800+ processor, its cheap and good peformance.

Re:try the 2800+ Mobile

[NerveGas]

Even with Doom3, you'll be perfectly fine. I have a 2500+ clocked up pretty high, but even at 2500+ levels, D3 is silky-smooth on my 6800GT.

A friend of mine plays D3 on a GF 5600 with an Athlon 1600+. He's had to turn down some of the visual details to accomodate the older card, but it plays just fine.

steve

Mistake in post

[Guerrillero]

a Mobile Athlon, based on the Barton SOI

The AXP-M is not SOI. Read here: http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51 624&highlight=soi

Re:Mistake in post

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD says it is on their public roadmap http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInforma tion/0,,30_118_608,00.html Though I've heard from many sources including some people at AMD that it isn't. Either way doesn't really matter.

Re:First Fanboy!

[vena]

i have an eMachines m6805 laptop which runs a mobile athlon 64 3000+. what do you want to know? it's a great little processor, i must say. buildworld on freebsd 5.2.1 takes about 15-20 minutes with -j4, and would likely be faster if the harddrive wasn't slow.

Laptops

[zogger]

Seems like you could build your home network out of used laptops then, with some hubs/switches. A lot of the older ones that are still decent are quiet and low noise and relatively low power consumption. Also very low physical space footprint. And if they are stationary you wouldn't need much beyond having them run through a UPS system to make up for the usually borked (and expensive to replace) batteries that come with most used laptops. Or just have one server stashed away someplace and use the lappys as thin clients, even quieter and less power.

Maybe, don't know, would be interesting to see an all laptop network though.

fanless?

[davegaramond]

Is there a desktop processor (at least 1700+ or better, AMD preferrably, x86 or amd64) that can run without a fan? I am quite annoyed with CPU fans nowadays. They tend to make more annoying noise compared to power supply fans. I am considering a Thermaltek liquid-cooling solution (around $150-$200) but really what I'd love is to have something that can run without a fan. I don't mind underclocking or buying a slightly more expensive processor. Remember the good old 486/Pentium days?

Re:fanless?

[davegaramond]

Even better, can I run my desktop PC completely fanless? I don't use high-end video card or anything fancy.

Re:fanless?

[zackeller]

Underclock and undervolt a proc and use a good heatsink. Or get a Zalman cooler and set it to the quietest setting. You can barely hear it, if at all, and you won't have to underclock.

Re:fanless?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the old days, sure. Good? no way.

The 486 and pentium I had generated _alot_ more noise than my current XP 2000+ mainly because back then hdds sounded like chainsaws and they really didn't bother too much with the quality of fans as just about anything was enough to keep the parts cool, even after dust got into them so bad they barely rotated (and sounded even worse if you can even begin to believe that). Not so now.

It's these little things you forget about the old days that makes you think they were somehow better :)

Re:fanless?

[J. T. MacLeod]

Someone else mentioned the Zalman flower cooler, which is what I'd recommend. Here's a link for it.

Honestly, any Zalman cooler is going to be absolutely inaudible in silent mode, and usually inaudable in normal mode once the case is closed. No, not "quieter than the competition", but genuinely silent.

Nonetheless, the flower cooler can run fanless on a CPU that isn't pushing the high end of its cooling capability.

I use two of them to cool my dual AthlonMP 1800+ processors. I do run the fans over them for peace of mind, but I could easily run them without it.

Re:fanless?

[sigaar]

If you run a low end VIA CPU, maybe. Not with today's powerful CPUs though.

Re:fanless?

[Sleepy]

You might, but why not run a super-low-noise fan just for sanity's sake?

The Mobile Athlons are unlocked, so you could run one at a lower MHz, which will let it run cooler. You can try lowering the voltage some, which will make a bigger difference still!

If you try fanless, I would at LEAST put a duct over the cpu in such a way that the power supply or case fan is pulling air over the CPU.

Re:fanless?

[adolf]

Zalman has fanless water cooling system.

Else, I've got a P133 which has been running continuously for five years or so with only a large heatsink on the CPU (no fan), and a power supply fan that hardly turns.

It's a real trooper. I'd be happy to sell it to you.

Re:fanless?

[/dev/trash]

You are so sensitive that you can hear the CPU FAN??????

Re:fanless?

[evilviper]

I am quite annoyed with CPU fans nowadays. They tend to make more annoying noise compared to power supply fans.

Look, you aren't forced to use the fan/heatsink that comes with your boxed CPU. There are millions out there, and most are much less noisy.

I would recomend buying a good heatsink that can accomodate an 80mm fan (eg. Thermalright ALX-800) easily found under $16. Then, you can buy an Enermax 80mm thermo-controlled fan. That's the exact fan Enermax uses in their power supplies, and it's the best fan I've found yet. It's about $5 for one (bestbyte.net) or $3.50/each for quantities of 10 or more (newegg.com). Also, using some good thermal paste (Arctic Silver 5) rather than thermal tape makes a good 20 degrees of difference on it's own.

Personally, I can't imagine why people would spend hundreds of dollars on cooling systems. My cheap ~$30 solution works fine here in the un-airconditioned desert, and all the fans together are less noisy than my (pretty quite) hard drives, not to mention the noise of my DVD-ROM.

In this current computer, you could say I got very lucky. I was making this system cheap, and everything turned out very well. The $30 mobo (KT133) is well-supported by fvcool, meaning it powers down to almost nothing when not in heavy use, and stays under 90F degrees with very little cooling (it would run well over 130 without fvcool). The heatsink that came with the processor is only 60mm, but has nice spaced-out fins, which is rare in cheap junk, and makes it better for quieter cooling. Plus, the power supply is dual-fan, and the case positions it directly over the heatsink. I spent $2 on a 80mm to 60mm adapter, and it's exactly the right height to connect my heatsink to power supply. So, just as a matter of dump luck, I got a very cheap system, which uses up half the wattage you would except, runs very cool (thanks mainly to fvcool), and has the most elegant system cooling arangement I've seen since DEC went out of business.

If you are really determined to have a fanless system, you don't have many choices. VIA's processors are absolute crap, and I say that from experience. You really have to take a very close look at the list (http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm) and select the lowest power processor you can find, that comes close to your performance specs. Even the "mobile" processors can be pretty power hungry. With a quick look, I find a couple that seem quite promising:

Athlon 64 (1.0GHz - rev. CG) 22W
Sempron (1.0GHz) 20W

These are destop chips, BTW. Make sure you get a Cool N Quite mobo if you go for AMD64, or a mobo fully supported by fvcool if you go the AMD32 route.

Wow, I've spent WAY too much time on this. Hope it's been helpful.

Minor correction

[slaker]

NT4 ran on a lot of things that weren't x86 PCs. One of my first jobs involved Honeywell GUS stations that were PowerPC machines running NT4. I still have a couple, in fact.
I vaguely recall seeing beta versions of Windows 2000 running on Alphas. I think there's even an Alpha directory on some Windows 2000 install CDs (which is empty, but still).

My MSDN Subscriber downloads has Windows 2003 Server for Itanium (not x86 but IA64) and Windows XP for Athlon64 (x86-64).

So Windows has in the past and does now run on non-x86 architectures.

Re:Minor correction

[RMH101]

but XP and 2003 don't. they no longer run the OS as an API, so you can't run them on Alpha, POSIX or anything like that. the end.

Re:Minor correction

[Jthon]

Not so. The dev kits for the X-Box 2 are PPC G5's and run a Windows NT kernel. Microsoft's NT architecture makes it relatively easy to port the OS to multiple systems. They just don't see any reason to as x86 has so much market share they can make plenty of money supporting only one architecture. Back when x86 wasn't the "only" choice Windows NT supported PPC, Alpha, and x86.

(POSIX is an API not a cpu architecture like Alpha, Microsoft even claims POSIX support in NT)

Re:Minor correction

[Baikala]

They (XP and 2003) don't run the OS as an API? could you clarify more on to that? maybe some links to help me out to figure out what are you tlaking about. Thanks in advance!

Athlon Socket Question

[pipingguy]

I checked the Asus site but didn't find the answers to this.

Which newer processors can I use in my A7M266-D motherboard (I have 1.58s now)? My understanding is that I can run it with only one CPU; would one ~3Ghz processor provide a noticeable difference over the two existing ones?

And regarding RAM, do I really need ECC/registered?

Re:Athlon Socket Question

[sigaar]

Well, I don't think you'll find any 3ghz CPUs that will fit in that board :-)

"Speed" depends on what you want to do. For gaming a cpu of twice the speed will be faster, probably same for audio/video encoding or other single threaded apps.

Re:Athlon Socket Question

[NerveGas]

I've got the same board running right now with dual AthlonMP 2800+ chips - Barton core, 512k cache, and all.

Even the newest BIOS for the board is very old, and doesn't recognize Barton cores as being MP capable, even though they are. Windows doesn't care, for Linux to run, you just disable the "MP support check" in the BIOS. Everything trucks along nice and dandy.

steve

Re:Athlon Socket Question

[pipingguy]

Thanks. My system seems to have a cooling problem so I run it case off with an external fan blowing cool air on it.

zalman flower cooler

[RMH101]

and a good case. you can run most xp chips at stock speeds passively with it. ric

Son of a....I just bought a Sempron!

[dmorin]

Finally just about 2 weeks ago I swung by the computer show to pick up some new hardware to replace the server in the basement. Although it's only ever been a 600Mhz PIII used for email and web, I was hoping to turn it back into a rather usable machine for some software development and other things. Guy tells me that the Sempron is the way to go.

Son of a......

Re:Son of a....I just bought a Sempron!

[Anonymous Coward]

i just built a computer for my friend last week and on account of his girlfriend being pregnant and very much vocal about money he had to go on the ultra-cheap. so we found a amd sempron 2500+ and a crapfetst motherboard in a combo for only $99.

well, first, isnt that a good deal?!?!

but alas, that sempron, with no adjustments, only runs at 1050 mhz...

is there ANYTHING i can do to get this wimpron to run faster safely?

(i want to run doom with all the textures decompressed)

but if anything, at least this beast can run znes, nesticle, 1964, and feather linux for books and music!

Upgrading integrated RAM/CPU ...

[CustomDesigned]

is easy when you have multiple CPUs. Just add more. Instead of adding RAM chips to a bank of SIMMs, add a CPU/RAM module to a bank of processors. Each CPU has a gigantic L1 cache and no external memory (other than the other CPU modules). The reduction in complexity should let the CPUs run much cooler - which is fortunate with so many of them.

Ideally, the hardware and OS should handle mixing different speeds and RAM sizes for the modules, so you could upgrade by adding some of the latest without throwing away your starter modules.

Re:Upgrading integrated RAM/CPU ...

[qbwiz]

A problem I've heard is that the processes for creating RAM and CPUs are different enough that making one with another process/making them at the same time is inefficient and results in things like slower memory or CPUs.

Google Cache

[Mr Europe]

Since we seem to have slahdotted the site, here's th Google Cache of the page:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:sNdpM5 m8QJ4J: www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-239-1.htm

0.13nm - I don't think so...

[melted keyboard]

I think hardcoreware made a little mistake with their units. On the first page of the review, a table is given comparing the three processors, and it lists the process technology as 0.13 nanometers.

Unless I'm mistaken, this should read 0.13 microns, or 130 nanometers. But no big deal right? It's only 3 orders of magnitude off... :)

Don't buy a Athlon64 3500+

[Ayanami Rei]

Get a 3200 939/90nm and save a hundred bucks or more.
It's not worth the incremental jump in speed, and you may be able to easily overclock it back to the 3500 level.

Re:Don't buy a Athlon64 3500+

[Anonymous Coward]

Good suggestion, although it's quite hard at the moment to find a 3200 939/90nm. Lots of socket 754 but not many 939. The lowest clocked 939 CPU at newegg.com right now is the 3500+.

Cheers.

Who said anything about Intel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not ass-u-me (because you are assuming incorrectly) that just because someone criticizes AMD they are automatically pro Intel (and vice versa). The same confusion criticism also applies to Intel, but this story in particular was about AMD. (Intel's decision to follow AMD's initiative to rate their processors doesn't help to clear Intel's confusion either)

So stop being a cheerleader, and start thinking objectively and critically.

I think you missed the joke

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster (the one subsequently called a "karma whore") posted his link AC... which means he won't get any karma points. Which means he wasn't karma whoring. Which means the namecaller was probably joking too.

Slashdotted - Mirrors Here

[Kinetic]

The Slashdotted pages are mirrored at MirrorDot.

Multiprocessing with the 760MPX chipset?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mobile Barton is basically the cream of the crop in terms of Bartons.

Can any of these chips be used in dual processor motherboards, or are they somehow disabled?

Re:Multiprocessing with the 760MPX chipset?

[NerveGas]

If you search around, there are people that have got non-MP Bartons working on the MPX chipset, but if I recall, it takes some work, and is still somewhat of a crap-shoot.

They do, however, still product Barton-core MP's up to 2.8 GHz. I know, I've got a pair of them in this machine right now. : )

steve

Overclocking....

[NerveGas]

For overclocking, the mobile 2500+ is simply the bomb. It's pretty cheap, is not multiplier-locked, and is hand-picked to run at lower voltages. By raising the voltage to normal, standard voltages, you won't find one that won't go to at least 3200+ levels (2.2GHz). It's not uncommon to get them to 2.5 GHz, which gives you a LOT of power for the money.

Of course, the real beauty is that because the multiplier isn't locked, you can adjust the FSB/memory clock as high as your board and memory will be stable, and *then* adjust the multiplier to get more CPU cycles.

For what you pay, they're amazingly good chips.

steve

I have quiet computers.

[mosch]

My main desktop is a G5. It's quiet out of the box.

My new PC is an athlon64 3000+ with a zalman cpu cooler, in an antec sonata case, with seagate barracuda 7200.7 sata hard drives, and antec thermally controlled case fans.

It wasn't an expensive setup (a little over a grand), and it's both fast and quiet. I couldn't reasonably ask for more.

Re:The REAL tragady of P2P

[sillybilly]

Ya know, that's how the brain works, lots of little neurons doing something simpler. You probably can't pull it off with a bunch of transistors, because they don't have enough legs, or dendrites - just one in/one out, and one for regulating flow.. but a few million cores, yeah, and we can cook up something that even nature couldn't cook up, because now you can make your neurons do sophisticated things, besides simple additions.

Yeah, but Frys sells MB/Sempron combos CHEAP!

[Newer Guy]

The Sempron might be a budget CPU, but Frys practically GIVES them away! Yesterday, I bought an Elitegroup K7VTA3 motherboard and a 2.4 gig boxed Sempron (with fan). The cost? 60 bucks for BOTH of them!

Couple this with an 18 dollar 60 gig drive from Office Depot (earlier this week), 512 Megs of DDR memory for 60 bucks (Frys), a 20 dollar case/PS, a 25 dollar video card, a 20 dollar CD burner, a free copy of Linspire (Lindows), and Open Office.org and you've got one hell of a computer for well under 200 bucks!

True, it wouldn't satisfy 'bleeding edge' people, but I'll wager that it would work just fine for the other 99.75% of us out there.....

On the subject of Mobile Athlon

[Davin811a]

I have a mobile Athlon 2400 with a shuttle AK32E motherboard. I am running cpufreqd to idle at 1 Ghz when possible. I am not able to change the core voltage with the powernow-k7 module only the multiplier. I would like to know if anyone sells a good desktop motherboard that also lets you change the core voltage when running Linux.

Re:The REAL tragady of P2P

[sumdumass]

I guess i'm tired but, as a little humor try replacing neurons with morons and transistors with transvestites.

For some reason i had to read you post 3 or 4 times before i realized i was reading it wrong. Then i figured you might get a little laugh out of my mistake

silent = slow!!

[crabpeople]

well unless your doing audio work in a soundproof room i dont see the point of having a quiet pc. theres always going to be traffic out your window or even the wind rustling the trees.

i have never seen the point in having a quiet PC. the more noise it makes, the more powerful!!! i thought that this was well known in every industry -- thats why the fastest honda civics have the loudest mufflers or why a motorcycle engine rev can wake the dead. Sound = power. Look at the stock market, people always say that millionaires are made every day and look how loud it is there!!
(this example assumes that money = power in case you had trouble following the brilliance)

cant you just tune out the fan noise? i can barely hear the hum of my work PC's becuase of the a/c / co-worker chatter / telephones rining, yet i am still able to think clearly. people say my apartment sounds like an airport runway but all i hear is white noise. MUCH better than office chatter or telephones ringing. also you could try turning up the music louder than the fans. that works too.

Got an XP2500+, love it, cant upgrade though

[aardwolf204]

I love my Barton XP 2500. I wanted a rig that would run fast and not break the bank, this was around the time that the XP3200 was just hitting the market, so I ended up getting the 2500 for $100, an nForce2 MSI board for $100, 2x256 of CAS2 DDR3200 for $100, and a Radeon 9500 Pro for $200. My $500 upgrade was worth every penny

and though its less than a year old I'm starting to feel the upgrade itch, but I cant. It used to be I could satisfy the upgrade itch by getting a new video card, or new cpu, or some ram, but my system is so balanced that getting a CPU wouldnt help my FPS without a new Vid, and vice versa.

Now I'm just waiting until I can get an AMD64 3000 for $100, motherboard for $100, Radeon X700 XT for $200, and 2x512 CAS2 DDR for $100ish. Yeah, I know, I'll be waiting a while, but already the XP2500 is $40 less than I originally got it for.

What is a 2500+ overclocked to 3200+?

[vxvxvxvx]

I could never figure that out, since AMD's performance rating system isn't linear.. do you divide 2500 by the stock MHz, and multiply by the overclocked MHz to come up with the 3200+?

NCU-2000

[vxvxvxvx]

Yes, you can do it. A great resource (with forum) for these kinds of projects is http://www.silentpcreview.com What I would run is a P4 with the NCU-2000 heatsink. A p4 because if you do get the CPU too hot, it would throttle itself rather than shut down your computer.

favourite quotes from the monastary

[mewphobia]

What kind of priest are you? Jedi monk?

Re:favourite quotes from the monastary

[sketerpot]

An alt.sysadmin.recovery monk. It's an anagram for "scary devil monastary", which is why it's often called the monastary.