Athlon 2500xp decides to try and compete with the 64..

Athlon 2500xp decides to try and compete...maybe..

Yeah yeah it isnt gona compete very well but it sure did try.


Dead stable to
44C... idle 50C load!!! Im so happy. Gona run some benchmarks today see what happiens.

Hey there - no disrespect or anything, but you can get a whole lotta more outta this baby. 3200+ or real 2200 MHz is justa a start realy and competing with an 64...hmm First off, is it a mobile or a locked version? Stepping? Did you take care of proper cooling, cleaned the case?

Also, idleing at 44 is quite high, at least if you're planning on OCing some more. Allready your load temps are up where they should be at a higher OC.

Again, dont get me wrong - just trying to help here - post some more data and hopefully I (we) can help you realy make it go!

Its a desktop barton. Not sure if its unlocked or not. Befor I go any farther with this im gona get proper cooling for the cpu. Dont want to fry it yet.
All I did for this was change my fsb from 166 to 200. And kept increasing the voltage ever so slightly till it was stable.

gofra said:

Hey there - no disrespect or anything, but you can get a whole lotta more outta this baby. 3200+ or real 2200 MHz is justa a start realy and competing with an 64...hmm First off, is it a mobile or a locked version? Stepping? Did you take care of proper cooling, cleaned the case?

Also, idleing at 44 is quite high, at least if you're planning on OCing some more. Allready your load temps are up where they should be at a higher OC.

Again, dont get me wrong - just trying to help here - post some more data and hopefully I (we) can help you realy make it go!

Click to expand...

If you look at CPU-Z, you will see that he has a desktop XP 2500+, most likely locked. If it were a mobile chip, CPU-Z would recognize it as such, and it would have a different logo picture at the top. The fact that it is also at 1.75v to achieve that speed is also a dead giveaway. The mobile 2600+ I just sold could do at least 2.5 GHz with that voltage on air. If it were unlocked, I imagine he would have squeezed at least 100 more MHz out of it by raising the multiplier.

He doesn't have what kind of Corsair PC3200 he has listed, but my guess is that it is ValueSelect. If this is the case, his overclock is limited by RAM more than it is by temperatures. I had some VS PC3200 that would fail memtest86 at 201 MHz, no kidding. The only thing to do is replace that if you want to get a respectable FSB and higher overclock.

As far as temperatures, they are a bit high, but nothing terrible. I'm going to assume that he is also using the stock cooler, or at least a very poor one. To give you an idea, the XP-M I mentioned earlier almost never broke 44º C under load. This was with SI-97 and a 92mm Delta, though. Still, I can't see him getting much higher than the 55-60º range even when running Prime, so temperature is not a huge problem, although obviously you want it as low as possible.

My advice would be to upgrade the RAM first, -OR- get a mobile chip (2600 pref.), then worry about cooling. There's no point in running 30-something degrees idle if it does nothing to improve your overclock, which I believe is RAM-limited. Buying a mobile chip would get around the RAM problem, since you would be able to change multiplier. I'm not sure about that Asus board, but I think it lets you go up to 12.5 multiplier, which would put you up to 2.5 GHz, which is a much more respectable overclock.

douglasb said:

If you look at CPU-Z, you will see that he has a desktop XP 2500+, most likely locked. If it were a mobile chip, CPU-Z would recognize it as such, and it would have a different logo picture at the top. The fact that it is also at 1.75v to achieve that speed is also a dead giveaway. The mobile 2600+ I just sold could do at least 2.5 GHz with that voltage on air. If it were unlocked, I imagine he would have squeezed at least 100 more MHz out of it by raising the multiplier....

Click to expand...

Hey there

Few things: my XP mobile posts the exact same pic in CPUz window. Also, the number under Voltage isnt showing the Vcore. I believe its the mobo voltage.


And as far as ram goes, value ram can sometimes realy surprise. Mine for example, can work under 220 & 2,5 - 3 - 3 -11 quite easily.

XP90 is a way to go! Seriously, it is said to be one of the best coolers out there. But as douglasb allready mentioned, theres no point in investing into serious cooling if you'll run into a barrier in shape of mobo or RAM. First, find out how far can you go and when you ant anymore, try to find whats stopping you. now, I realise this is going to be a bit hard, since you wont be able (guessing) to change your multiplier. I also dont know how would memtest86 (a nice tool to test your memory) react on desychronized FSB speed and your RAM frequency, although it seems the only way. Wait for experts advices...


Good luck anyway!

Lol, my 1700+xp can do that on stock voltage :lol:

To unlock it dont we need to do a bit of sodering?

An yeah it was cheapo corsair value ram. 80 bucks on newegg.. I figured i would need to get better later on. Right now with what i have currently every thing is extremly stable. The new heatsink is on its way so im happy there aswell.

My Goal isnt to make this as powerful as the 64's but to rather be able to run most programs like the 64 would be able to do.

This board has the ability to change the multipler up to 12.5x or higher. Cant rember off hand.

You're right about CPU-Z detecting the mobile CPU - I was thinking of CPUID, not sure if it's the same way. I don't know about the Asus board, but I had to use a modded TicTac BIOS on my NF7-S to get it to say that it was a mobile, rather than "unknown processor." Anyways, the number listed for voltage under CPU-Z is, in fact, the vCore.

As far as the RAM, my experience has been that Corsair speed-bins their ValueSelect very carefully, so that most of it can't do much, if anything, more than the rated speeds. Anything that could do higher speeds is sold as another model. TwinMOS, on the other hand, has some great value RAM, because they don't seem to bin it as much. That being the case, I think his RAM will be the limiting factor.

Also, running out of sync won't mess memtest86 up, but it will absolutely kill your memory bandwidth between northbridge and processor. One of them will end up having to spend cycles waiting on the other, which is very inefficient. I'd take a lower clock and run synchonously rather than take the performance hit of running async. It's tremendous on the Athlon XP, not so much on other platforms. It's because of this, the memory bandwidth being the bottleneck, that the Athlon XP needs about 400-500 MHz to equal an A64 usually. Even so, if the program being used involves SSE2, then the XP has no chance.

One more thing of importance is the fact that the XP-90 is not designed for Socket A. I've seen mods done for it to fit on a Socket A board using zip-ties to hold it on, but I personally wouldn't trust that, especially when an SI-97 isn't much more. XP-90c is VERY heavy, and zip-ties holding it on will not provide very efficient contact with the processor die. Not to mention that it would wobble and chip the core. I would say the XP-90c is most absolutely NOT the way to go for Socket A.

flamerail said:

To unlock it dont we need to do a bit of sodering?

An yeah it was cheapo corsair value ram. 80 bucks on newegg.. I figured i would need to get better later on. Right now with what i have currently every thing is extremly stable. The new heatsink is on its way so im happy there aswell.

My Goal isnt to make this as powerful as the 64's but to rather be able to run most programs like the 64 would be able to do.

This board has the ability to change the multipler up to 12.5x or higher. Cant rember off hand.

Click to expand...

No, no soldering involved in anything. It's either unlocked or it isn't - there's no way to "unlock" it yourself if it's super-locked at the factory. If you look on the second line of the label on the chip, the right side of it will have a production week/batch code on it, 0424 MPMW, for example. In that example, it means 24th week of 2004. If it is anything past a certain week (I think mid-2003), then there is absolutely no way it's unlocked. Somebody can probably tell you the exact date when AMD started superlocking these processors. Unless it is a fairly old chip, odds are, it is locked.

The board will let you "change" the multiplier in BIOS whether the chip is locked or not, but if it is locked, it won't actually change it when you check the clock speed.

You should have no problems running most programs with 2.2GHz, assuming you have a decent video card. My XP-M running only 200x10 could run everything I threw at it. Rome: Total War would slow down just a wee bit when there were a LOT of characters on screen at once moving, and a few FPS couldn't run in high detail, but that's just as much related to the video card as anything else (I have a mid-range one, Ti4600).

Dohl I cant believe I overlooked the Xp-90s compadiblitys! Ill give newegg a call monday an have them cancle the order or if im to late ill just send it back saying it didnt work as specifyed an get the correct one.

As for the ram.. Dont you mean FSBram ratio? When you say in sync...


An ill have to check my chip when the correct heatsink finaly arives for the date. Its rather old now... maybe ill be lucky

flamerail said:

Dohl I cant believe I overlooked the Xp-90s compadiblitys! Ill give newegg a call monday an have them cancle the order or if im to late ill just send it back saying it didnt work as specifyed an get the correct one.

As for the ram.. Dont you mean FSBram ratio? When you say in sync...

An ill have to check my chip when the correct heatsink finaly arives for the date. Its rather old now... maybe ill be lucky

Click to expand...

Yeah, a 1:1 FSB:RAM ratio is synchronous. Some boards list it as 3:3 or 6:6, also. I was talking about that because gofra said that would be the only way to get a higher overclock for you. I'd say go ahead and either move to a mobile chip (best choice) or upgrade your RAM (2nd choice).

The production cap where AMD started superlocking Athlon XP's is apparently week 39 of 2003. Anything after that is almost definitely superlocked, and anything 2004 or later definitely is. Anything around 0339 may or may not be.

One more thing, don't order heatsinks from Newegg. Their prices are awful on those. SVC.com has great prices on heatsinks, and they are reputable. Some more good places are coolerguys.com, jab-tech.com, sidewindercomputers.com, oxide.com, and paragonca.com. ParagonCA has a VERY limited selection - they have only Thermalright heatsinks, but they have great prices. I got my SI-97 from them, and can say that they are probably the best place to get this one particular item. I believe it's under $35 shipped w/ Priority (2-3 day) shipping, but check it out for yourself.

Yeah I will check the date as soon as I can.

I will most deffinatnly get the heatsink from elseware. An will probly get better ram.

Oops, sorry there - didnt realize the heatsink wont fit your socket. Thanx to douglasb for explanation...

@douglasb:

- RAM desync with CPU: I only mentioned that possiblity so that he could test out wheter his ram can handle higher FSB or not. I am aware of a big efficiency loss doing this in real life. I realy dont see any other way to test it...

- CPUZ number: Well I dont know about you, but it sure doesnt change when I change the Vcore. It DOES change when I change the mobo voltage though. So which is it ?


@flamerail:

Try to Google a bit with your stepping numbers in the search field. Maybe you can even find folks using same mobo/RAM/CPU combo. And although your CPU does seem to be superlocked, dont give up. I managed to run my old desktop XP 2500 @ 2380Mhz (AQZFA stepping, 49th week, 03))! It was thirsty for some voltage though - so, once more - allways keep a good eye on temps. And if you plan on raising your board voltage, make sure you take care of north and southbridge cooling first ( I would go for active on first one and goo passive on second).

So put a good heatsink and maybe a fan on both of them. Northbridge is the chipset correct? These already have a large heatsink. Ill figure out a way to add like a 40mm fan or somthing to it.
I dont think this chip is super locked. I havent tried changing the multipler yet.
But Ive had it around here for ages!

douglasb said:

If you look at CPU-Z, you will see that he has a desktop XP 2500+, most likely locked. If it were a mobile chip, CPU-Z would recognize it as such, and it would have a different logo picture at the top. The fact that it is also at 1.75v to achieve that speed is also a dead giveaway. The mobile 2600+ I just sold could do at least 2.5 GHz with that voltage on air. If it were unlocked, I imagine he would have squeezed at least 100 more MHz out of it by raising the multiplier.

He doesn't have what kind of Corsair PC3200 he has listed, but my guess is that it is ValueSelect. If this is the case, his overclock is limited by RAM more than it is by temperatures. I had some VS PC3200 that would fail memtest86 at 201 MHz, no kidding. The only thing to do is replace that if you want to get a respectable FSB and higher overclock.

As far as temperatures, they are a bit high, but nothing terrible. I'm going to assume that he is also using the stock cooler, or at least a very poor one. To give you an idea, the XP-M I mentioned earlier almost never broke 44º C under load. This was with SI-97 and a 92mm Delta, though. Still, I can't see him getting much higher than the 55-60º range even when running Prime, so temperature is not a huge problem, although obviously you want it as low as possible.

My advice would be to upgrade the RAM first, -OR- get a mobile chip (2600 pref.), then worry about cooling. There's no point in running 30-something degrees idle if it does nothing to improve your overclock, which I believe is RAM-limited. Buying a mobile chip would get around the RAM problem, since you would be able to change multiplier. I'm not sure about that Asus board, but I think it lets you go up to 12.5 multiplier, which would put you up to 2.5 GHz, which is a much more respectable overclock.

Click to expand...

His oc may not necessarily be limited by ram....
I have corsair VS running at 241 with 2.64v(ddr booster helps regulate voltage so I could bring it down.) Some of that VS is good stuff........

gofra said:

@douglasb:

- RAM desync with CPU: I only mentioned that possiblity so that he could test out wheter his ram can handle higher FSB or not. I am aware of a big efficiency loss doing this in real life. I realy dont see any other way to test it...

- CPUZ number: Well I dont know about you, but it sure doesnt change when I change the Vcore. It DOES change when I change the mobo voltage though. So which is it ?

Click to expand...

If his multiplier is unlocked, then he can raise RAM/FSB up, then drop multiplier, and he can test his RAM without having to run out of sync.

As for your CPU-Z voltage being shown, what you are experiencing is an exception rather than the norm. Apparently on your board, the chipset voltage and CPU voltage sensors are reversed from the "normal" configuration, which would be why CPU-Z is giving you northbridge voltage. Think about it, why would CPU-Z tell you your northbridge voltage and not your CPU voltage?

flamerail:
Yes, northbridge voltage=chipset voltage, and on some boards, it is called IGP voltage. A fan would help, but at some point, when you run a board too much higher than it was designed for, no amount of cooling can help, and other components start failing as well. EDIT: Just realized you had the Asus board, I had confused you with someone else. It should be fine with FSB over 200, to an extent.

yo4444:
Congratulations, it sounds like you got some great VS there. I'm guessing it's fairly old? Corsair seems to be aggressively speed-binning their newer VS. I think I also got a bum stick, because most people can at least pull 205 or so out of it, and I needed 2.8v to run stock. The 512 MB sticks seem to be the worst offenders as far as a lot of people getting bad sticks lately. If you go to Corsair's forums, virtually all of the RMA requests/questions deal with 512 MB ValueSelect sticks. Sounds like you got a winner there, I would hold on to it for sure. My XMS needed 2.8v to do that with 2.5-3-3-11 timings on my NF7-S v2 board.

Yeah the board is designed to run a 400mhz fsb. But I am gona get some extra little sticky do-dad heatsink for other parts on the board. Will try and rig up a fan for the chipsets aswell.

Well newegg already shipped my xp90 ( the wrong thing) so... I guess ill send it back an say it didnt work like specificed and get my money back.

Or if they wont take it ebay

flamerail said:

Yeah the board is designed to run a 400mhz fsb. But I am gona get some extra little sticky do-dad heatsink for other parts on the board. Will try and rig up a fan for the chipsets aswell.

Well newegg already shipped my xp90 ( the wrong thing) so... I guess ill send it back an say it didnt work like specificed and get my money back.

Or if they wont take it ebay

Click to expand...

You can always refuse delivery. I think they will let you return it as long as it is unopened with no problems, though.

hahaha.
Well I ordered some link depot cables to... so I want thoes. The friend who recommended the heatsink for me is gona pay to ship it back sense he clearly recommend it.

Good guy