Coppermine cC0 Chips

Today is supposed to be the first day that cC0 chips are supposed to “begin” to become available per Intel. Well, we
learned from the cB0s not to take Intel’s dates too seriously. You probably won’t actually be able to find these things
for another four-six weeks.

A stepping is a revision to a chip, incorporating improvements and fixing discovered bugs. In this case, Intel is slightly
shrinking the circuitry in the processor; it will take up about 10% less surface area than the cB0 stepping processors.

This is a refinement of the .18 micron process, not a new process, which would cause a much greater reduction.

Will it improve the overclockability of the Coppermine. Doing something like this usually does. However:

  1. The voltage is actually getting upped to 1.7V for these chips, which serves to increase the wattage used by these chips, probably
    offsetting the usual reduction in wattage from a chip shrink.

  2. With the same or a little more power being packed into about 10% less space, this makes it a bit tougher to cool the chip. We’re certainly not
    in AMD territory with this, but I wouldn’t be trying to reach 1Ghz or so without at least serious aircooling. (A Golden Anything is not serious aircooling in my book, no matter how cool it looks. Besides, unless you’re an
    Golden Geek exhibitionist, who is going to see it?).

So things will improve a bit, but nothing dramatic.

The CPUID of the chip will change from 0683h to 0686h. Running this might require a BIOS change on some motherboards, it may not. This should not be a problem on any reasonably current motherboard that is still getting its BIOS revised. If your mobo can run Coppermines now, it should be able to run these.

The Holy Overclocking Grail

A few of you have shown mild interest in reaching 1Ghz.:)

The current cB0 do not reach 1Ghz easily. Some do, most don’t. A lot of them get close, and there’s no real practical difference between
933 or 980 and 1Ghz, just like your whole world didn’t change when we hit 2000. Nonetheless, if bragging rights are paramount, the odds on you
getting four digits should improve with the cC0.

But not much more than that. I’m estimating the average cC0 will be capable of up to roughly 1000-1050Mhz. Maybe 1100Mhz for exceptional chips. Get into serious Peltiers,
and 1200 or a bit more becomes likely.

The real purpose behind this is to tell you what to look for, which is the cB0 stepping. Here are the s-specs for these (the MM# is an ordering number which might be useful to know):


S-specs for Coppermines with the new cC0 stepping:

100Mhz Processors

FC-PGA Processors  
S SpecSpeedMM #
SL4CM600 Mhz830152
SL4CK650 Mhz830151
SL4CH700 Mhz830150
SL4CF750 Mhz830148
SL4CE800 Mhz830149
SECC2 Processors  
SL4C7600 Mhz830199
SL4C5650 Mhz830196
SL4C3700 Mhz830195
SL4BZ750 Mhz830194
SL4BY800 Mhz830149

If you don’t want to remember all of this, just remember that all cC0 processors have an
sspec starting with SL4B or SL4C
.

Since I keep getting asked about this, bear with me while I explain E/EB again.

Until very recently, there has been no reason to prefer an EB over an E chip if you are overclocking (there really still isn’t now.)
I do not care what a certain person at Tom’s Hardware writes, you will get more of an overclock and get better performance from an E chip
than an EB the vast majority of times. Write me
for a further explanation.

You have more room to overclock with an E chip than an EB chip.

For example, a 600E chips operates at 6X100. A 600EB chip runs at 4.5X133. If you ran at 150Mhz, 6X150 is more than 4.5X150. 6 times anything
will always be more than 4.5 times anything.

A higher FSB provides a slight advantage, given equal Mhz. However, even a 50Mhz improvement in overall Mhz usually makes up for a 15-20Mhz increase in FSB.

Of course, if the CPU can’t run at a certain speed, having a higher multiplier is useless. However, with the cC0 stepping, a 600Mhz processor should usually be able to hit 1Ghz at 167Mhz, which
would be the same as buying an 800EB and doing the same.

You should only consider buying an EB chip if you are going
to do one of the following:
:

  • You are buying a brand new core (processor, 815 board, very high grade PC133/PC150 RAM). You are going
    to try to run it at 166Mhz (which I don’t recommend as a planned expectation, since you’ll be overclocking your PCI bus about 25%, which only
    a minority of systems can tolerate), and you don’t have the guts to try it with a cC0 600E.

  • You are going to gamble that an EB will run fine on a PIII DDR board (figure towards the end of the year on this one), and you’ll accept minor
    overclocking now. (Don’t recommend this either, better to leave your options open and choose between what may be a better AMD package at that point or
    what will certainly be cheaper/better PIII combos at that point.

    Here is the listing for cC0 EB chips.

    133Mhz Processors

    FC-PGA Processors  
    S SpecSpeedMM #
    SL4CJ667 Mhz830141
    SL4CG733 Mhz830140
    SL4CD800 Mhz830139
    SL4CB867 Mhz830138
    SECC2 Processors  
    SL4C4667 Mhz830169;
    SL4C2733 Mhz830166;
    SL4BX800 Mhz830165;
    SL4BV867 Mhz830163;

    Email Ed


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