2.4c vs unknown socket 754 amd

I'm currently running a 2.4c on an abit ai7 (i865) and I have an asus p4c800e coming via the classies (i875). Current clock is 12x251 1:1 with the memory (12x200 stock) @ ~3 ghz, but I could run it at 12x280 with the memory 5:4 - the memory is my limiter right now, 3-4-4-8 rated corsair ddr466.

It turns out I have an asus K8V-X SE socket 754 motherboard (asus link) that takes AGP and DDR, which happens to be what I have in my rig. (unlocked 6800nu and the aforementioned corsair ddr466).

How much of an improvement would something like a sempron be? Which cores are most overclockable? I see palermo core semprons starting at $40 at newegg, but I know very little about the 64 bit amd processors.

Basically i'm thinking for my purposes, there's a break even point in comparing an unknown socket 754 processor with my current setup (3ghz p4, 1k fsb)... I just have no idea what it is. Anyone have a quick answer?

my quick answer is, i don't know which would end up better.

but if the cpu is only $40, why not buy it just to try? i would pay $40 to have a 754 to play with.

My guess is the $40 sempron wouldn't even come close to the overall level of performance offered by an HT-enabled p4c running at 3ghz+, because of the small l2 cache on the sempron.

That said, I was able to trade some ram for a 3200+ sempron in the classies, so I have one coming.

I think eventually i'll probably try to trade my way into a real athlon 64 for the board, I'm leery of the sempron line b/c of the cache.

The cache on the sempron makes for a negligible performance decrease.

At 3Ghz, your p4 is not exactly something that would be hard for a sempron to beat. At its stock 2 Ghz for the 3200+, it should be about even.

Of course if you can get your p4 to 12x280 it would be a different story, because I don't think you are going to get much overclock out of the K8V-X SE. If I remember correctly, the early VIA boards had no pci lock.

Quailane said:

The cache on the sempron makes for a negligible performance decrease.

At 3Ghz, your p4 is not exactly something that would be hard for a sempron to beat. At its stock 2 Ghz for the 3200+, it should be about even.

Of course if you can get your p4 to 12x280 it would be a different story, because I don't think you are going to get much overclock out of the K8V-X SE. If I remember correctly, the early VIA boards had no pci lock.

Click to expand...

No, it's got one. I tested the chip out today (franken-caseless while watching tv episodes) and found that I could reliably overclock the sempron by 25% or so. I... THINK. The clockgen architecture of a64 (and sempron) cpus is vastly different than what I'm used to, so I'm not real sure what's going on.

I can't attest that it was stable but I was able to install ubuntu on an old harddrive I had lying around, and it passed memtest runs (with the memory using a divider, it's 256mb of pc2700 hehe).

So anyway, at this point my gut is telling me that with dual channel an overclocked sempron running 250 fsb 1:1 with the ram would beat a p4 clocked at 3.0ghz, 250 fsb 1:1 with the ram, but I'm not sure. =/

I think it probably doesn't matter though, either the sempron would win, or the results would be so competitive as to not matter... so unless I get feedback here telling me not to, I'll probably go with the sempron in my main rig.

One problem i'm having, however - no matter what I set the memory timings to in bios, they're always 2.5-7-7-15 in memtest. WTH? This happened at stock speeds 1:1, and overclocked running a divider.

I could change the timings in memtest to 2-3-3-6 and enable 1t and it worked fine, but upon reboot it reverted back to 2.5-slow-slow-slow. =/