AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Review 6 Weeks Before Release

Mathew Solnik writes: "Tom's Hardware has a review of the AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 6 weeks prior to its official release. This review shows how to unlock the multiplier on the AthlonXP and how to reach AthlonXP 2000+ speeds easily." Note that by doing so, you are voiding any warranty you may have started with, risk blowing up your eyeballs, etc; do proceed with caution.

Please

someone explain to me why they had to choose that name.

As far as I can tell, one product named XP is one too many.

Like the way AMD is going

I am just more and more impressed with the way AMD is going with there technology ... I just hope that keeping the same "basic" archtecture doesn't hurt them in the long run. I am looking forward to AMD chips in the future

Risky ...

... considering that THG just had that infamous test like "what happens when the cooler dies?"

And AMD's processors literally went up in smoke!

No doubt you should have a fire extinguisher near!

:-)

thanks for the warning...

Note that by doing so, you are voiding any warranty you may have started with, risk blowing up your eyeballs, etc, do proceed with caution.


We're all (most) adults here, there's no need to remind us of the consequences of our actions. If you put up warnings for this, you should put up warnings every time a kernel release story is out - "caution. This kernel may cause unstability, security holes, poor performance, oily discharge, etc".

~z

Just what we need...

Another XP! It was bad enough when Windows went XP. Is AMD trying to associate itself with a software company out of Redmond?

Re:Just what we need...

And you call yourself a geek! It is obvious to the rest of us that both AMD and MS are trying to ride the coattails of D&D, where the goal is to accumulate as many XPs as possible. I've almost got enough to reach second level, which means more HPs and another spell. It's a good thing CDRs are so cheap these days...

Other hw sites have already done this.

So I don't see why this had to be posted at here. If you're interested about overclocking you computer you also prolly read those hw sites.

the good toms hardware

Tom's Hardware has been getting a lot of bad press these days. Thier burning Athlon videos caused a lot of controversy, and regulars at some other tech sites (*cough* Anandtech *cough*) have a strong dislike for Tom's work.

But this article just goes to show you why Tom's Hardware is the best hardware review site out there, just like it has always been. Over the years, Tom has written some of the best articles for hardware enthusiasts and has pushed "overclocking", a term which was once mysterious, into one of the big issues of modern computing. Motherboards are now being designed specifically for overclocking, and this has lead to huge increases in performance. Most people forget that Tom's Hardware has been one of the most influential sites as far as this is concerned.

It's good to see what is undesputably the best current article on technology. I hope even those who hate Tom's Hardware will see the light. No other tech site has anywhere near the ability to do stuff like this.

-NeoTomba

Re:the good toms hardware

Overclocking was cooler back in the olden days. Taking a 300 MHz Celeron to 550 MHz, or whatever was much easier and more productive.

Looking at the benchmarks, doing this is NOT worth the time and effort.

Tom has the time and money to dink around with these types of things. It might be worth it to him, but this article is likely worthless to 99.9% of his readers, simply because they aren't going to do it.

Compare this with overclocking a Celeron, I bet over 50% of the readers gave it a try. Writing those articles were actually relevant. I'm sorry to say that this one isn't.

Relevance of Publications

A ferrari vs. lambo vs. porsche shootout is pointless, yet many magazines do them. How to build a $10,000 small block engine is pointless, yet there is at least one or two per year in hot rod.

Many publications do pointless things. Not always is the point "this matters". Sometimes it is "isn't this some cool shit?"

Like the Linux kernel source. I'm not going to monkey with it, but a handful of others will.

I just got an rma for a 1600+

I might just wait for a awhile. I am posting this on a new K7s5a with a 1GHZ AMD, MDK8.1 and this things is smoking already. I dono how much faster I could get!

Will people buy it?

With the down turn in the economy, and there not being a great deal of software that non computer savy people use that require processors of such speed do people think that there will be a great demand for this chip in the consumer market?

Very nice ... BUT

Now all that is quite an achievement, that they figured out all what's involved, but let's face it: Overclocking an Athlon XP 1900 to 2000 won't do anyone any good. That's like 2% more performance and at what kind of expense and risk? What would be informative and what wasn't provided would be if an Athlon XP 1500 (1.33GHz) can be rigged to reach 2000+ (1.66GHz) that way. It's all about how much headroom the CPU-core has and the price/performance overclocking provides.
Tom's article shows that the Athlon XP clearly doesn't have a lot of it. We can expect the Palomino core to stick around the 2000-rating (1.66GHz) for a while ... at least until they go 0.13micron.

Connect 2 contacts.

I think it's cool that AMD has made it so easy to make this chip overlockable. According to the article, all you have to do is connect the L1 contacts, and that's it.

although, keep in minde this is not for the faint hearted. you will also need a conductive lacquer to connect the contacts, tape, super glue, a scalpel, and multimeter. I don't know about you guys, but I think when all this is required to overclock your CPU, it's a bit much for the rewards you get.

Also, for most users, the faster processors like this new AMD are so fast anyways, that overclocking them will probably give a faster experience only in benchmarks, and not in real user experience. It's a cool article, none the less - but if you just bought one of these babies, would You want to pull out all these tools to overclock it?

I would play it safe and be happy with my already fast computer.

Nice!!

that means even more room to overclock when it'll shrink to .13 microns.

I didn't think the current process would go above 1.5 with standard cooling, this is good news :)

Now where are those Nvidia boards...

hmm

shouldn't that read "from the chips-to-HEAT-up-your-neighbor dept."?

How much difference will this make?

I took a look at the benchmarks that Tom provided. Is anyone really going to notice the performance difference of overclocking their 1900+ to 2000+?

It's a few hours of work besides, and they run the risk of destroying a piece of expensive hardware to do it.

This space for rent.

Maybe I can buy an AMD chip

with my homemade "equivalent" dollars. Really, Mr. Dealer, one MyDollar® is the equivalent of $3USD.

Illegal

This sort of circumvention is illegal under the DMCA.

In addition, since it makes Ahtlons explode it can be construed as a terrorist act under the recent counter-terrorism act.

In short, Tom will be shot at dawn.

Be very careful if you do decide to overclock.

If I could give one piece of advice from personal experience, the pink thermal pad supplied with certain heatsinks is not adequate for the job. If you intend to overclock your cpu, scrape off all the pink crap, and use some proper thermal compound like arctic silver. Spread it very thinly, too much and it will act as an insulator.

Also, bear in mind that not only will your warrenty be void, but some people have said you may be liable to penalties under the DMCA, since the clock multiplier lock is considered a form of 'encryption' and the increased processor speed gained by unlocking it can be seen as 'copyrighted software'.

Quite how this can be the case is beyond me, surely the speed at which I run my software is down to me, but you never know with these DMCA issues. It can all get a bit surreal at times.

superglue

If you read through the article, it points to several pictures where things went awry. One such example is where the superglue ran under the scotch tape onto the contacts and couldn't be scraped off.

Some superglue manufacturers offer a thicker type that doesn't run quite as eagerly as the liquid type. It is more the consistency of model airplane glue so you have more control as to where the glue actually goes. It can be found at hardware stores and any place that offers a decent selection of adhesives. This may be a better solution than hoping and preying that your masking job is adequate and liquid superglue does seem to have a mind of it own sometimes as my fingers will testify.

How about skipping the superglue altogether?

Since you're going to the trouble to buy silver laquer (in either the bottle like Tom's used, or in an applicator pen) you might as well go to the trouble of buying conformal coating material in a bottle or applicator pen- it's not THAT much more expensive. While it's cure time is a lot longer than superglue's, it's designed for this sort of thing and it's at least a little easier if you fsck things up with your end run around AMD's overclock blocks (because it's laquer and will give you some options to carefully scrape any overflow off of the lands.).

By the by, this all seems like a lot of effort for little payback. Some of you may not want to do this.

Tom's hardware of Burning Tbirds.

Well, duh!

That was my first response.

Now consider that Tbirds and P4's produce the same "horsepower" or have the same "oomph" despite one being 2Ghz and the other 1.4+.

Ok, with that in mind, don't forget that the acutal size of the processor. The actual chip part of an athlon is, what?, 1/4 the size of a p4?
Not only that but the p4 has a heat spreader (or first stage heatsync?) where the Athlon does not (almost typed in doe snot..heh, I love typoes).

I'm sure thermodynamics ~= a simple physics question:
Which exerts more force an elephant with a foot that has a 6" radius or a 100lbs female in high heel shoes (down, boy) with a 1/4" wide heel?

The hinting was at which would hurt more, in essence. It went against most ppl's intuition.
More force (or pain.) would be delivered by the 100lbs female on that 1/4" surface area.

Similar reasoning applies to the Athlon. All that heat, on that small area. Did not help that the thermal shutdown sensor on the MB's did not poll quick/good enough (maybe the MB's were made in Florida, dunno. Cheap shot, sorry).

Funny thing is this: if you did overclock, most likely you would leave the case's side off and would notice. And it is getting to the point with heat syncs that either liquid cooling systems are going to be needed soon, or anchoring it to the MB, a la p4's, is the next step.

Either way I am going to build an AMD system soon before prices go up...only drawback is how to muffle the sound of dual 7k rpm fans w/o putting the thing outside.

Cheers ppl.

Superglue. Now 1002 uses.

I can't wait to see someone show up for work with processor stuck to their fingers.

I'm sure the song by Huey Lewis "Happy to be stuck with you" will surge in popularity for a brief moment.

Hamfisted...

Connect the pins with a pencil mark? Use superglue as an insulator? Normally I would shy away from attempting such a hack, but those mangled processor shots make me think - YOU CAN DO IT!

Overclocking...

Anyone ever see any parallels between rabid overclockers that pay more time and money than it's worth to increase speed, and rabid automobile enthusiasts that pour money into building customized engines that they'll never be able to really utilize?

To be blunt, there's some dickwaving going on here, as always. 1900 to 2000? Big whippity whoop, especially considering the effort and cost dangers.

Inadequate testing

I'd be more impressed if, after their rather tacky jumper insertion, they ran a good hardware diagnostic program [ami.com] for 24 hours straight and didn't detect any problems. The overclocking crowd tends to think that if the machine will boot up, it's working. They're wrong.

Tom's Hardware is also using the wrong tools for the job. Even other overclockers [mac.com] know better. There are pens for writing PC board traces with conductive ink. Using conductive paint and tape is doing it the hard way.

Why overclock?

I read the article and found it interesting, but I fail to see why most people would want to spend the time and effort to do this. Why not just wait a few months for the next generation of CPU's to come out?

Also, how reliable would this overclocked CPU be after a few months? What if the superglue or L1 contacts overheat and breaks a connection?

Overclocking is evil!

From the article:
However, the maximum setting is currently limited to 12.5X, which allows you to reach a clock speed of 1666 MHz (12.5 X 133 MHz = 1666 MHz) without having to increase the front side-bus clock speed

Or maybe what is being said is that the Athlon XP's are wickedly fast

You be the judge

"Crack the processor?"

"we managed to prepare a clear, step-by-step guide so that all you ambitious PC users can crack the Athlon XP processor"

I didn't need any help doing that. I've managed that my self before!

"we also show benchmark results that demonstrate the jump in the performance of the Athlon XP/MP"

Mine performance jumped right into the trash can after I "cracked" it.

What about the FBS?

I would have liked more results with overclocked FBS. If I got XP, I propably wouldn't bother to connect the L1-bridges just to gain few % of additional performance. I would increase the FSB. Easier, and it gives you more performance.

I think XP is just begging for more FSB. Cranking it up to say 300Mhz (2x150MHz), would increase the actual MHz of the CPU, and it would nicely increase you bandwidth (both memory and FSB).

Of course, I would much rather have the Clawhammer with it's 800MHz FSB...

Very, Very, VERY old news...

Overclockers.com [overclockers.com] had the information out a couple of days after the XP came out. This article [overclockers.com] came out on 19 October with essentially the same information as Tom's. Since then, at Overclockers, there have been other articles dealing with other approaches to reconnecting the bridges and how the laser cuts have changed.

I don't know why people think that Tom's is a particularly good source anymore. These days they really seem to be slow off the mark...

Better Method and Reversible

I find it amusing that Tom's Hardware went through "
several dead processors" before they figured this out. Especially since other hardware sites had posted this a week or two ago. Guess they had to read the articles and find out how to do it.

Check out VR Zone's method. Much better and reversible.
http://www.vr-zone.com/guides/AMD/AthlonXPUnlock/ [vr-zone.com]

Tech Stats
http://www.oc-athlonxp.com/bridges/ [oc-athlonxp.com]

This store already has it?

http://on.to/netone How do they have it?!

XP vs MP?

So - can the XP be turned into an MP? Is this also just bridge work, or does it just drop right in?

I'd kill to have a Dual 2000+ MP system...

You didn't get it..

They overclocked a presently available processor, making it equivalent to one that will be released in 6 weeks.

Re:Bypassing security to overclock

You are comparing a CPU to a piece of software. When I buy a CPU, I am buying a physical device. When I buy software, I am buying a license to perform only a few particular acts with that software, not the software itself. Since I actually own my CPU, I can do whatever I want with it: overclock it, paint it, use it as a frisbee, burn it up, freeze it, chew on it, sell it, whatever. All I can do with software is use it as the license dictates, and sell that license to someone else (right of first sale (or something like that) -- no matter what anybody says I can do this, as long as all physical copies of the software are transferred as well).