K7N2Delta L Capability

[OldSchoolNinja]

Wakirimas Forum Brothers,

I have an MSI K7N2 Delta L (MS6570) motherboard with an NForce2 chipset. I was going through my manual the other day trying to learn to develop a strategy to maximize her performance ramp her up and max her out. In Mainboard Specifications it says:

"Supports Socket A (Socket 462) for AMD Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron processors @266/333/400" - No surpises there, makes sense.

Then it says:
"Supports 600MHz up to Athlon XP3000 Processor or higher":

600Mhz? I'm assuming that's FSB. In BIOS I can set the FSB as high as 233 and there the FSB speed selections end.

Can someone explain what this 600MHz is referencing?

Thanks,

Old School Ninja

 

[RGone]

A 600Mhz speed processor up to an Athlon XP3000 or higher processor. XP3200 was the fastest processor in retail for that old board.

 

[OldSchoolNinja]

Rgone,

Thanks for responding. That was how I read it too. The only problem is that I have never heard of a 600MHz Athlon or any Socket A cpu for that matter. Does that mean that you can run an XP3000 or greater at 600MHz? I can't believe that it does but that's why I'm asking.

Another conflict is the fact that the FSB selections only go up to 233MHz. So you are looking at running effectively 466MHz. That's not 600MHz. I'm asking because I figure that it might be true given manufacturer semantics and the more you learn about those semantics the more informed your decisions.

Sincerely,

Old School Ninja

 

[mammut]

Hi OldSchoolNinja,

After AMD's K6, came the Athlon, starting off by Athlon&Duron 600s(6x100Mhz).
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K7/AMD-Athlon 600 - A0600AMT3B.html

By this time AMD's FSB (front side bus) was not anymore what it used to be.


"Actual bus frequency is 100 MHz. Because the processor uses Double Data Rate bus the effective bus speed is 200 MHz."

So if say your board has a max of 233MHz "fsb" then an old Athlon would go 1400MHz(6x233), of course due to limitations of that time it would not go quite that far..

 

[theflyingrat]

Ahh, the Duron 600... that CPU was pretty amazing back in the day. I remember we put together a Duron 650 rig for a friend of mine; the difference between his old K6-II 533 and that Duron was a lot greater than the 117MHz would indicate! It'd do 900MHz easily, without a voltage increase (something that was impossible on his motherboard)...

 

[OldSchoolNinja]

Wakirimas Mammut and Flyingrat.

As I am not too familiar with the Duron I must confess that I don't fully understand Mammut's answer to my post. The only thing I can assume is that you are referencing the rated MHz speed of the chip which is not related to the FSB speed.

My cpu is rated at 400MHz and my FSB selection go to 233. When my FSB is set to 200 then mt XP3200 is at it's 400Mhz rating. With a locked multiplier of 11 this gives me a 2.2 GHz speed.

The Duron example, I assume, references a multiplier of 6 with an FSB of 100. Given the formula for rating performance, with my XP3200, that would mean the Duron is rated at 200MHz. With a multiplier of 6 that would yield a speed of 600 MHz. Is that correct?

What is confusing me is that I'm assuming the same "math" is used in describing 266/333/400 (133,166,200 actual fsb setting) support is the same when they state "Supports 600MHz up to Athlon XP3000 Processor or higher". With that logic shouldn't the motherboard have an actual 300 fsb setting?

I'm guessing this is pretty simple but for some reason I'm not seeing it.

Sincerely,

Old School Ninja

 

[theflyingrat]

I think they're describing the CPU support for the board all the way up and down the line. That is, the motherboard supports anything from the old-school 600MHz Duron all the way up to the Athlon 3000+, with no statements made there pertaining to the FSB speed.