KVR Audio

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 5:01 am

Ottawa doesn't seem to have any Athlon XP-M 2500+ anywhere. Nor any XP-M at all.

I can get a regular Barton 2500+ easily and cheaply ($109 Cdn).

I can get a Barton XP-M 2500+ less easily and cheaply, through mail order ($124 + shipping).

Either way, I plan to overclock, but only a wee little bit, because the inherently cooler cores will allow it with negligible heat increase and no noise increase (I won't be changing my cooling system).

Now, the problems and hence the need to post:

- Current Bartons (non mobile) are apparently "locked" in multipliers. But I can still overclock without changing the multiplier, correct? Keep in mind, I'm not planning on taking the OC to the extreme anyhow.

- Since the OC will be minor, is it even WORTH getting the XP-M? People love it for OC, but only because it can take abuse. I don't plan on abusing it anyhow. If I can make it (or the regular Barton) perform like a 2800+, I'm a happy man. I don't need 3200+ extremities, and I don't think my motherboard or RAM are up to the task anyhow.

Greg

nutekk · Post by **nutekk** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 5:31 am

yea i would go with the xp-m
however i wouldnt overclock any without some improved cooling...to unstable

im currently runnin an old "unlocked" 2500xp
@ 2.6ghz and a 500mhz bus

maximilians1 · Post by **maximilians1** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 5:37 am

here is a begginers quide to overclocking, I'm trying to do a little overclock myself, maybe this site will help http://www.overclockers.com/topiclist/i ... p#BEGINNER

dbavirt · Post by **dbavirt** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 5:44 am

I never overclock. Windows is unstable enough as it is, I don't need some overheating piece of circuitry adding to the problems. Generally you won't notice the speed increase anyhow, especially at those speeds. Consider that going from 2500 to 2800 is only a 10% increase.

Overclocking was made popular by the Celeron chip, which was exactly the same as the faster Pentium chip minus some cache. In fact, Celerons were originally supposed to be Pentium chips that did not qualify at higher clock rates, but worked fine at slower speeds. The Celeron was so popular, however, that Intel started pulling perfectly good Pentium chips and selling them as Celeron. When the public caught wind of this and found that their lowly Celeron could be overclocked by 50-100%, the overclock craze began.

Although chips today can often run slightly faster, they may not be able to maintain this rate as the chip heats up, thus the need for more active cooling systems. Consider whether the increased probability of glitches is worth the slight speed increase.

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 5:50 am

I've certainly considered it...

And I've already done some research-- with mild overclock, I wouldn't need to switch up cooling systems.

Air-cooled, you can jack an XP-M all the way up to 3200+ performance as long as all components are in-line performance-wise, which mine aren't.

A 10% increase is pretty substantial, considering that the difference between an Athlon XP 3000+ and an Athlon64 3000+ is less than 10%, and that's for a completely different architechture.

I understand what you're all saying, though, which is why I'm tempted to just go with the regular Barton 2500+. If I hadn't heard of the XP-M, I probably would have bought the Barton without blinking.

Just one of those things... carrot dangling and all...

Greg

maximilians1 · Post by **maximilians1** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 10:41 am

I have a stupid question of my own. What happens to your soundcard when you overclock the fsb , on most motherboards overclocking the fsb will also overclock the pci buss as well? Will this cook your soundcard?

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 10:43 am

No, the PCI/AGP bus clock is run separately from the processor/memory bus.

bleebsen · Post by **bleebsen** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 10:57 am

whyterabbyt wrote:No, the PCI/AGP bus clock is run separately from the processor/memory bus.

Sorry, this is wrong.

Only a few, newer motherboards are able to have really independent clocks for FSB and PCI. Most of them just divide the FSB to obtain the PCI clock. And since there are only 3 or 4 "legal" FSB clockrates, they only have 3 or 4 (hardwired) divisors.

This CAN crash PCI cards, most probably SCSI, IDE or LAN cards, with a chance of loosing data but without a real chance of damage.

I'd say it's not worth the hassle.

The XP-M is no different chip btw. It's just "hand-picked elite crop" of ordinary XPs.

sincerely
bleeb

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 11:03 am

Well, most motherboards Ive seen recently were capable of it. But if there are still some that dont, then you should always read the manufacturers spec and check...

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:19 pm

bleebsen wrote:The XP-M is no different chip btw. It's just "hand-picked elite crop" of ordinary XPs.

That's slightly incorrect. While ESSENTIALLY you're correct, there are 2 key differences:

1. XP-M runs at same speed with less voltage, which has 2 possible implications -- a) less heat with no OC, b) more OC while only bringing CPU up to "nominal" temperature levels.

2. no locked multipliers

Other than that, sure, the architecture is identical.
Greg

caganer · Post by **caganer** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:53 am

I bought an XP-M 2600+ that runs at 2.0GHz with only 1.45v...a regular XP Barton needs 1.65v

The processor is now overclocked to 2.4GHz with 1.65v, an Athlon XP rating of 3500+...it runs cool because uses the 1.65v like a regular XP cpu.

The XP-M 2500+ should be able to do the same I suppose

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:18 am

Yup.

I couldn't find any in my area, so I just broke down and got a regular Barton 2600+

.

C'est la vie. Hopefully it'll hold me over until Athlon64 systems get even cheaper than they are, then I'll make the switch.

Greg

Stupid Barton question