Athlon XP 2800 Question

[DMac]

New to the forums. Been visiting the site and reading posts for a while. Awesome site.

Thinking of buying an Asus A7N8X and an Athlon XP 2800. I've seen this CPU with the Barton core as well as the T-Bred "B" core. At this point I'm thinking about the Barton core since it has a larger L2 cache. Two questions:

1. Which is better?

2. Are there any differences in overclocking with as Asus A7N8X board? (Is everything done through the BIOS?)

[c627627]

Hi.
New CPUs are multiplier locked now.

It makes a big difference what the rest of your setup is.
MHz speed = [FSB] x multiplier
2500+ has a multi of 11 and works great with PC3200 RAM sticks that can hit way into 200s FSB.

If you have PC2700 RAM, since multiplier unlocked Bartons are hard to find now, the 2100+ B is your better option.

Asus has great extras but Abit is a better overclocker and Soltek nForce2 is also an overclocking champ with an incredibly low price.

Holy smokes, just found out: RED ALERT, newegg one day sale that ends in a few hours, GET THIS BOARD NOW for $89:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-166&catalog=22&manufactory=BROWSE&depa=0 !

Originally posted by c627627
God bless capitalism: zipzoomfly always tries to match newegg: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=240109 $89 there too, probably only until the end of the day.

[DMac]

Everyone seems to rave about the Abit NF7. I may have to consider getting one. Would you recommend a 2700 over a 2800 then? You recommmended the 2100+, but I'm running a 2000+ now.

My deal is I have an Asus A7S333, which doesn't allow hardly any overclocking. I found this out only after buying it. Trying to avoid a similar mistake this time. So I'm looking for something I can reasonably overclock to the 3 GHz level without water cooling or anything that extensive. What would you buy?

If the multiplier is locked, it requires manually unlocking it with a pencil or connecting the bridges etc. right? Looking for something I can just overclock from the BIOS. I've seen some people here seem to like the Barton 2500. Maybe that would be a good choice...

[c627627]

It's the 2100+ B with PC2700 RAM.
or
the 2500+ Barton with PC3200 RAM.

2700+ T-Bred B is worse than 2500+ Barton for overclocking because they're different cores.

A good 2000+ B (not A, not Palomino) will overclock in the general area of the 2700+ B overclock.



Originally posted by c627627 (way before Bartons came out)
Overclockers exploit the manufacturing process knowing the goal of the manufacturer was to have all CPUs being capable of running as fast as the line's fastest processor plus additional headroom. Only those CPUs that pass rigorous tests at default voltages, are given labels toward the end of the line. Others are labeled not just according to tests, but according to marketing plans.

So as you can see:
http://www.c627627.com/AMD/AthlonXP/

Thoroughbred B's scale to 2800+.

We noticed that the greatest overclockers were 1700+ and 2100+ T-Bred B's capable of reaching those end of the line speeds of 2800+ "plus additional headroom."

That's why it's best to buy those CPUs and not higher labeled CPUs since $ is another factor in overclocking.

...and that's why 1700+ T-Bred B should scale not too far below any 2x00+ T-Bred B using the same equipment.

[DMac]

Thanks for all the info. If I was running the NF7 and the 2500+ Barton with PC2700, what kind of overclocking results could I reasonably expect?

Last question...do you think my Thermaltake Volcano 12 would adequately cool the 2500+ overclocked to near 3 GHz?

[DMac]

After re-reading your posts, I think I got the answer to my first question. I definately want PC3200.