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AMD

Overclocking The AMD Duron 68

Posted by timothy from the faster-pussycat-kill-kill-kill- dept.
JellyBeansOnToastWithStrawberryJamonTop writes: "I noticed in Sharky Extreme and Tom's Hardware coverage of the AMD Duron processor that they both have details on the overclocking capabilities of the processor. Looks like the new Celeron 300A, eh?" It's cool to see that AMD has not locked out overclockers with their new chips. But where are the dual Athlon motherboards, please? Updated 3:19GMT by t: Apropos of overclocking, check out Feedmag's not-uninteresting take on overclocking culture.
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Overclocking The AMD Duron More

Overclocking The AMD Duron

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  • Forget multiprocessor Athalon, I want multiprocessor K6.I've posted on thi before, and have done some more studying, it IS possible. If sombody would make a chipset to support it. AMD should really pay more attention to the multiprocessor market, their chips are inexpensive enough to make it worthwhile.

  • Nuclear Meltdown? (Score:3)

    by Amoeba Protozoa ( 15911 ) <jordan@husney.gmail@com> on Saturday June 24, 2000 @12:01AM (#979354) Homepage

    I hate to sound coy but these processors should maybe not be called, "durons," as they consume a lot of power, which makes me really wary about the lifespan of these products due to the extra heat; less actually overclocking one of these suckers without a refrigeration system. Here is a quote from the sharkyextreme article:

    The CPU is made of 25million transistors and takes up 100mm^2 of die space. In comparison, the Thunderbird uses 37 million transistors and takes up 120mm^2 of die space. Power comes in at 1.65V at a maximum of 25A, which means the Duron consumes up to about 41W of power. That is over twice the power consumption of an Intel Celeron 600MHz, which only consumes 18W. It is also a bit over half the power consumption of the AMD Thunderbird, which consumes up to about 79W... yikes! We will discuss power usage more a bit later on.

    Sharkyextreme goes on to mention that the 16k L1 cache size may attribute to the extra power consumption-- but for a new chip with little air-time it makes me worry.

  • Re:Hi, I have a question (Score:3)

    by Perdo ( 151843 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @12:06AM (#979355) Homepage Journal
    Here is a price list from sharky's. It includes shipping costs. We overclock to get a 950mhz processor for 159 bucks.

    Duron 600 $92 Spartan Technologies 888-393-0340

    Duron 650 $125 PC Progress 888-727-7647

    Duron 700 $159 United Micro 800-943-7255

    Athlon 950 $581 Econo PC 888-326-6660

    P3-933/133 $777 Atacom Inc. 877-228-2266

    If you burn two processors shooting for 950mhz you still have not spent 581 bucks for a "real" 950mhz processor.

    For those of you wondering about multi processor setups, imagine using two 950 Durons with mo-bo for less than the price of a single "real" 950 without a motherboard.

  • Hmmm:) Unless you're running it on a new Duron, I don't really know what this has to do with the topic and I'm surprized you haven't been moderated down already, AC. Still it seems like a genuine question.

    I'm interested in the Duron, btw, and am going to try and run Solaris/Intel on it. Linux is very cool, but unfortunately neither myself or Johnny, our compiler expert - can compile our custom written software for anything other than Solaris. We still have hiccups with Solaris/Intel/cc! Anyway, it will be very interesting to try it with the Duron, I guess we'll need an externel compiler person to help us out though .

    As I said though, your question seems sincere, so here goes:

    I have Linux (mandrake 7.1) installed

    Aha! The latest Mandrake.

    I have a Linksys PC Card nic (ec2t) in it. I can't get it to see the other machines on my home network, or to even ping them, and I am really not even sure it is working (works ok when windows is installed).

    Ok, I don't have much experience with PCMCIA cards under Linux or in general, but what you need to ensure is that PCMCIA support is compield into the kernel.

    Go to /usr/src/linux

    Type "make menuconfig". Configure everything appropriately, under networking, do add support for PCMCIA. Save the config by "Exiting", then type "make dep". After that, type "make bzImage". Copy the resulting bzImage from /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot into /boot, and edit "/etc/lilo.conf". add an entry for the new image. Once you have that going, your PCMCIA should be detected when you boot the new image.

    I don't have any experience with Apples, but there's definitely a way to share drives through SMB (the protocol used by Microsoft for file/print/etc sharing, including Network Neighborhood). You'll need a package called "Samba". If you don't have it, you can download it from samba.org. Once this is installed, you will edit the /etc/smb.conf. Ensure that the domain/workgroup is the same as the one on your Windows machines. Also ensure that your Windows machine name has a Linux user account with the same name, then connect to the Linux machine using it. If you can't connect but do see the machine in your network neighborhood (the Linux machine from your Windows hosts), then you'll need to download the Windows 98 Registry Hack to Enable Cleartext Passwords. Perhaps with the latest Samba they've got built in support, I don't know.

    Once all this is running, you'll need the latest Kernel. Get it from www.kernel.org. It has all the latest stuff in it. I'm running it, 2.3.99pre9. To do this, go into your /usr/src directory and type "lynx www.kernel.org". Scroll down and press enter on the "2.3.99pre9" link and type "D" for Download. Once you have it, click "save". Press "enter" for the default directory, /usr/src

    Now, type "tar -zxpvf linux-2.3" . Now, proceed the same way as with your 2.2.15 kernel source code. Don't forget to backup your kernel images, btw. You should have a failsafe option in Mandrake 7.1 anyway. That's about it.

    Good luck

    .
  • I had an idea, when you want to overclock, you got to reboot everytime you change the speed. Perhaps we should change this and make it possible to change speed using buttons. Remember those good old days with those 'Turbo' buttons.
  • It seems to me that overclocking has often been frowned upon by a lot of people. It seems that no one comes out and say "you damn well better not overclock a-hole!" but it's a silent thing....you just get the feeling that some people are of the opinion that 'overclocking is stealing processor cycles'

    Idunno - i'm glad that AMD is still making their chips 'overclockable' - or at least isn't denying anyone the ability to do so. That, in addition to the fact that AMD has been bitchslapping Intel in the processor market lately, makes me even more brand loyal than i was before. I'm on my third AMD (K6-2)...and i'm not about to switch any time soon!

    VIVA LA PROCESSOR RESISTANCE!

    off-topic: has anyone notice their karma decreasing for no reason since the new /. code was put in place??


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • Overclocking and distributed.net. (Score:3)

    by Lita Juarez ( 201217 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @12:54AM (#979359)
    While we're on the subject of overclocking, I wonder how many people are running a distributed.net client on an overclocked machine, against distributed.net's wishes? This piece [distributed.net] from the distributed.net states clearly that distributed.net do not like people running their client on overclocked machines, since there is a possibility that the overclocked processor could produce an incorrect result, and thus jeopardise the entire project. The people who run distributed.net clients on overclocked boxes are very selfish, as they do not care that their actions may mean that millions of hours of other people's processor time may be wasted. Considering all the processor cycles I have donated to distributed.net, I would be furious if I found that the project has been spoiled by some kiddie running the RC5 client on an overclocked box.

    I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest. Why not just go out and buy a fast processor? Considering the cost of some of the cooling devices that are used (Peltier coolers etc), it would probably be cheaper to buy a fast processor in the first place.

    --Lita (member of Team Slashdot)

  • This is exactly what the Crusoe [transmeta.com] does, even automagically (depending on how much work it has to do).

    This results in massive energy saving abilities in case of the Crusoe, but am I the only one wondering if it can be used for overclocking too? After all, the control of the speed is software based, and therefore it should be possible to hack it, methinks...:-)

  • I had an idea, when you want to overclock, you got to reboot everytime you change the speed. Perhaps we should change this and make it possible to change speed using buttons. Remember those good old days with those 'Turbo' buttons.

    This is possible on Windows, using a program called SoftFSB [tweakfiles.com]. It lets you change front-side bus speeds on the fly using a slider. I used to use it when fiddling with my Celeron 300A/450 system, and it works very well indeed.

    --
    qube

  • These days, once processors have passed the 400 or so MHz mark, the disparity between memory/bus speeds with main CPU speeds becomes significant. Often you'll get more mileage out of UNDERclocking the CPU, if that means you can OVERclock your PCI or AGP bus.

    The Real World performance of a system (not RC5) depends on much more than processor speed.

  • This is equipment that is expensive enough for most of us to be somewhat annoying at the very least should we wreck it.

    while i'm not one of the 'hard-core' overclocking crowd (you know...building systems that are cooled by a bath of refrigerated mineral oil), i've overclocked every system i've ever owned...and never had an overclocking related failure.

    admitedly, my efforts aren't all that adventurous, but i've had a P200-MMX to 250MHz, a K6-266 to 300MHz, a PII-400 to 500MHz, dual Celeron 366s to 525MHz (my home system), and a PIII-450 to 600MHz (my work system). they all work great and are just as stable as the 'spec' versions.

    why wouldn't a user want to get extra performance out of their systems? i think the risks of damaging CPUs by overclocking are are a bit overhyped.
  • After a few weeks operation my old
    Commodore started missing & I was disturbed
    at the heat being thrown out of the unit.
    What I did was cool it down by puting a
    voltage drop in series with the system. I made
    up a resister consisting of two 250 watt bulbs
    in parallel on the hot leg of the powerline
    to shave the voltage down. Playing around
    with that and a couple of 10 watt ceramic
    resistors I got the thing running very cool
    for many years of error free operation.
    Has anyone tried that?
    I always figuired that some chips throw
    more heat than others because of variation in
    uncontrollable production factors. Couldn't
    one lets say buy a cooler chip for a premium;
    20-30 bucks over price for scoped cool chips.
    Has anyone tried shaving the chip casing
    or drilling the board beneath the chip
    to increase cooling? [Screw the FCC
    emmission standards I'll put a refrigerator over it].
    Is there any way of telling when your over
    clocking is starting to fray around the
    edges, so one can back off. As a political
    prisoner of the Free Masons conspiracy
    w/limited cash & space, chip exploding is
    not a hobby I can easily get into. [I come back
    from a trip, my car ain't been moved, I got
    a $300 dollar muffler problem: I go to park'
    this fink is holding 2/half spots. Nice don't
    work so I gather a crowd, yelling Bastard
    "you Masons don't care for nobody's rights".
    He don't move. This little old lady
    dressed in black with a a black on pearl cameo [badge] walks out of my crowd, whispers threw
    his window, & the window of the next car.
    Shazam, they both drop their cell phones & roll out smartly.So now I'm sitting in 5 spaces...
    she's saying, soto voce, 'there's no problem
    here they just misunderstood' The next day
    I buy a hot sausage hero. its tainted, so I ate
    the eggplant hero instead. I sliped the sausage to the witch.

    But I digress, once again,
    [learn from this my children]

    Personally I think all these super z80s
    sux but waiting for a 6200 series RISC
    chip that'll run at 100 megs is probably
    unrealistic. Also the software on the
    pc are almost coming up to the volume of the
    stuff on the commodore. Time to get with the
    program, they won't let it on the net, although
    this guy claims he's using his as a servor.

    ^ ^ ^
    Since Geo. Washington, the officers of
    the Armed Forces have all been
    Free Masons, which may be why
    their Russian Brothers had our
    troop movements before our men did
    in Korea.

    VA doctors have found neither
    chemical or biological
    justification for the Desert Storm
    Syndrome. Perhaps our officers
    are punishing our men for what
    they did under orders. Done
    with a MICROWAVE LASER.

  • Actually, this overclocking race shows us how far the companies stand from eachother :P

    When Pentium II 300MHz and Celeron 300A ruled the known universe, they had a lot of slack. One could put it up to at least 450MHz without any hiccups, quite often even higher.
    At that time, AMD was having a hard time. Their K6-2 sucked, it is a well known fact that they don't go up as easily as Intel's CPUs...

    So, Intel was WAY ahead of AMD in the MHz race, because it could introduce CPUs with higher speed more often than AMD.

    Now, the tables may have turned. Duron 600MHz goes up 350MHz (to 950MHz), has a 200MHz FSB et cetera, while Intel Celeron can barely reach the same frequencies - 733MHz -> 1GHz, that's only 266MHz...

    So, AMD is holding the MHz race flag. For how long? This competition thing, I rather like it :)
  • Which makes perfect sense when you stop and consider, hey, 42.

    Criminey, I think someone's hitting the shrooms a little early in the morning today...

  • I don't think Sharky's review mentioned this, but according to Tom's article, Asus will soon be releasing a Socket-A board with jumpers and dipswitches for changing the multiplier! This is the board Tom used for overclocking four Durons to 950MHz, all of which were stable he said. More motherboard manufacturers will most likely do the same as Asus.

    This is very exciting, because with AMD's Slot-A CPUs you have to open the Athlon's case, and do some soldering (or you can buy special cards that attach to the Athlon for the purpose of changing the multiplier).

    With a Socket-A motherboard like Asus', overclocking the Duron (and Socket-A Athlons) will be a piece of cake. Now we just need some SMP Socket-A boards... :)

  • I think most people do it for status. If you think about it, all the money you spend on extra cooling, added electricity, new cases, etc... doesn't really buy you any more processing power than spending $100 and upgrading the CPU. But with that $100 upgrade, you can't brag about how hardcore you are. It's kind of like souping up your car. So you've installed fancy headers, carbs, turbos, intakes, and now you have a 500hp monster car. But what good does that do you? How often do you really _need_ to go 180mph? Unless of course you're into drag-racing which is ALL (99%) about competition and status... You can also buy stock ~500hp cars and not spend one minute working on it, but you don't get to brag because any chump with $100,000 can buy a car like that, but it actually takes some skill to do it yourself...
  • "They" can do whatever they want. They're their chips. They don't owe you SMP. Why don't you start your own processor company and make cheap multi-processor systems and come back and tell us how easy it is....

  • I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest. Why not just go out and buy a fast processor? Considering the cost of some of the cooling devices that are used (Peltier coolers etc), it would probably be cheaper to buy a fast processor in the first place.

    In my case, I wouldn't say that it's a penis thing. The reason that I don't go out and buy a faster processor is because I can't afford a faster processor. And when I can afford one, the first thing I'd do with it is to overclock it.

    As for those people spending money on Peltier's, thermal compounds and such like. Maybe some of them do it on a penis agenda. But some of them just do it for fun. I know I do. It's all about driving the equipment as far as it can go, in the name of experimentation. Pushing the envelope and all that, wot.

  • Actually, it takes some skill to earn $100,000 to pay for aforementioned car.

    It takes plain old dorkyness and a white-trash attitude to screw around with $50 bolt-on crap to get a 500hp car.

    It's status though. Fastest car in the trailer park!
  • "They" can do whatever they want.

    Given that there's only 2 (3? 4? a handful anyway) of "them" actually in the market, you're quite right. Whether the free market is enough in these conditions to ensure that "they" are not anticompetitive is a completely different question.

  • That's a tasty troll (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Considering all the processor cycles I have donated to distributed.net, I would be furious if I found that the project has been spoiled by some kiddie running the RC5 client on an overclocked box.

    Some kiddie? That's amusing. So you're saying that all overclocks have the mentality of children? Massahplease.

    I'm not going to directly say that overclocking is wrong, but I think that overclocking is a childish pursuit and for many people it is nothing more than a dick size contest.

    Of course you're not. Your obvious goal is to whine about how you feel overclocking is a male pissing contest.

    Well, get over it.

    If you've got something to say, at least post it without the rant next time.

  • I like the competition too.

    As long as fools out there are willing to buy the AMD crap, it helps drive down the price on Intel chips for people like me.

    Face it, AMD got their start in x86 cloning by stealing Intel IP back in the 286 era. They had licensed the 286 from Intel in order to provide a 'second source' as required by the government.

    So basically we have a case of the government prying open the Intel vault, AMD stealing the goods and running with them.
  • The whole project being jeopardised by one (or a few thousand) erroneous results is a tell-tale sign that the distributed.net system is flawed. From what you say, it sounds like they're banking on all hardware to be perfect all the time, which is impossible, regardless of what speed it's running at. Also I should dearly hope that they've prepared themselves for faux clients, which will always return incorrect results, and thus be a little bit more worrysome than some overclocked box.

  • Re:Overclocking and distributed.net. (Score:3)

    by jidar ( 83795 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @05:46AM (#979376)
    And as a longtime overclocker you know all of this personally right?
    This is total BS. An overclocked processor isn't significantly more likely to create an incorrect result in RC5 than one a normally clocked one. If something fails it will fail the same way a normal CPU will, it will screw up enough stuff such that the client wont function at least, and probably bring the OS to it's knees too.
    As for the Dick size contest, that is sometimes true, but not usually. I Overclock because I make $8/hour (in other words, im poor) but I still like to play Quake competitively online. A Celeron300A cost me ~$100 when I purchased it and I achieve framerates in Quake2 which are identical to the framerates a p2-450 gets you. This was -without- having to put any money into extreme cooling measures, nothing but a stock heatsink and fan. At the time I purchased that Celeron it cost me about 1/5th of what a p2-450 would have cost, and by overclocking I got the same performance.

    Stability? Rock solid, and over a year later, its still going strong.

    I plan on getting one of the new flipchip Celeron 533's for about $100 here in the next week or two, drop that into a FC-PGA to Slot-1 converter ($20) and according to everything I have read it should do 800mhz with stock cooling.

    And again.. why am I doing it? Because I'm poor. And yes, I have a small penis, but that is unrelated.
  • Whats wrong with tweaking something you have to make it run faster? Car, computer, code...etc?

    I suppose that when your code runs too slowly you don't optimize it...you go buy a new machine, right?

    Nah...with that attitude you probably don't write code...
  • not so sure about the self-destructive behavior.

    overclocking is the technological equivalent to putting a turbo kit on your car. The same equivalents can be said for new exhaust systems, new cylinder heads, tranny, etc. No one is accusing these guys of being self-destructive even though they lower the life span of their vehicle's by up to 100k miles or so. Of course, rather than beef up your car, you could just buy a newer, faster one for more money, but you don't get the same satisfaction and you certainly don't get the same cost to performance ratio as you would by fixing up a slightly older or slower vehicle.

    When a guy fucks with his car to run a quarter mile in 13 seconds...that's initiative. When a guy fucks with his processor to make it 50-100Mhz faster, is that self-destructive??? I think it's frugal

    Secondly, who the hell are you to tell me that just because i sniff glue i'm less of a person than you are. Of course sniffing glue is fun...but...er....wait...i better go...


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • Re:Overclocking and distributed.net. (Score:4)

    by darkstar-x ( 167380 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @05:52AM (#979379)
    Overclocking is not a matter of a dick size contest as such.

    its getting your _true_ value for money. sure, i can go and get a AU$2000 cpu, but tell me why i should? when a) they are extremely hard to find, and b) with overclocking, i can get close to, or the same speed as that $2000 chip, for only $400 + 75 for a cooler.

    see if you can justify those costs.

    also, tell me what is rc5 trying to prove anyway? yes, i am a very mild contender in rc5, but it doesnt exactly hold any scientific value. seti@home for example, is where the consern should be.

    since you say overclocking is a "how big my dick is" _contest_, what about rc5? i get nurmorous amounts of people saying quotes like "ive got such and such blocks done, im so leet, ph33r my hardcore skills"

    overclocking is a childish pursuite? it maybe to a constricted mind, like yours, but if it wasnt for the remarkability of overclocking, the celeron range would be scarce, dead, or simply not preforming as well. the intel celeron got popular, and made intel money because of overclockers.

    As for you knocking peliter coolers, overclocking for these people is a hobby. they are proving a concept to themselves and going beyond whats nessasarily required, needed and so forth. take the 1ghz $2000 cpu for example again. remember ho w my cooler and 600e cpu, costs me a total of 475. Ad a peliter to that, and hold on a second, whats this? only an extra $50. a total of $525 to get the preformance of a chip that costs 4 times as more.

    A person wants to by an old car, lets say a classic or fairly moden, etc... and do it up. why dont they just go buy a new car? simply because THEY DONT WANT TO. there is no enjoyment going and buying something that already preforms well, when building something, creating something to be proud of is more valuable, both in price and emotional attachment.

    Take hacking (NOT cracking) for example, now why dont people just learn the minimum required? Because they feel as if learning the minimum is stupid. i bet you many people can get by with out learning a programming language, but they learn it because they are intrested in the benefits it holds, and they are expanding thier knowledge.

    next time when you oppose something, try to research and examine carefully as to what you want to get across, and what your knocking.

    oh, just for the road, another analogy for you. any car can go to the required road limits. why do people buy a car that is more appealing to them, buy a peice of machinary that is somewhat exquisite? take your time to answer, and see if you can realise that people have free will, if they have an ambition to gain a certain status/value and so forth, then they would do so with a strong passion.

    if it wasnt for overclocking, i doubt that processor companies would be where they are now, hell even amd overclock their processors for the high end athlon classic range.

    --
    ----
    "What you SEE is sound, what you HEAR is the Desfness of Society" - darkstar.
  • One day I was with a few friends, and we were in Philadelphia, and we walked by one of those neighborhood asian computer stores. At the time I was looking for a new CPU so we stopped in. I asked the woman behind the counter, "Do you have any Celeron 300As, you know the ones that can overclock?", to this she responded, "no overclock, no overclock" while waving her finger back and forth, after that we got thrown out of the store. I thought these places would be pro overclocking, but I guess not, I didn't want to start an international incident, I just wanted a new CPU!

  • Re:Hi, I have a question (Score:3)

    by jidar ( 83795 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @06:03AM (#979381)
    This is an easy one to answer.

    "Is a couple hundred dollars so hard to come by that we are unwilling to spend it for the peace
    of mind and stability of a processor we know is not about to overheat?"

    The answer, yes. Newsflash; a couple hundred bucks is rich man territory if you look at the state of humanity on a global scale. Hell we don't even hav eto leave the good ol US of A. You have even sat down NEXT to people in restuarants who consider a couple hundred bucks quite a bit of cash. Amazing huh?

    That aside, the truth is, we get more performance at -significantly- reduced cost, not just a few hundred dollars. Those Durans that are doing 950mhz are $100 CPUs and outperform 1000mhz Intel chips. :P

  • Threre was something like this for the Amiga. As far as I remember it was regulating the speed according to the heat of the processor.

  • I have been runing RC5 clients for nearly two years [distributed.net], some of them run on oc'd computers.

    What I find useful about overclocking is that i can use the extra heat to cook my grits.

  • Dual Durons "later this year" (Score:3)

    by Meerkat299 ( 124660 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @06:15AM (#979384)
    In the conclusion of Ars Technica's [arstechnica.com] review of the Duron [arstechnica.com], Loki cites a couple of articles reporting that SMP support will come out for the Durons later this year:

    On the SMP tip, the Duron according to this news post [2cpu.com] at 2cpu.com [2cpu.com] will support SMP. This shouldn't come as a big surprise since it's built on the Athlon core. The SMP-ability would have to be specifically disabled, which is likely more trouble than it's worth [arstechnica.com]. Later this year, AMD will be releasing the AMD 760MP chipset which will have ATA100, DDR SDRAM support, and SMP support. I'd love to see a board that I could start on dual Durons and kick up to dual Thunderbirds later on.

    HTH

  • Except that it works.

    Dork.

  • Maybe for the 1337 hax0rs on the overclocking web sites it's about status. But for myself and my friends, all of whom overclock, it is about getting more for your money!

    Let's see... a celeron 300A OC'd to 450MHz cost me EXACTLY THE SAME as a 300A running at stock speed. Any cheapo fan did the trick. I was running a 450MHz system long before "mere mortals" could afford it. I was AHEAD of the curve for once in my life. For less $.

    My current rig is a celeron 566 running at 850MHz. It cost me about $130 for the CPU/fan/slotket adapter. No special cooling was required. I used a fan/heat sink that cost $10. Where's the crushing additional cost?

    And I know all about how the Celerons aren't as fast as a real PIII and yadda yadda yadda. Big deal. I am still getting more for my money. A lot more. More frames per second. Faster respose on the desktop. What's not to like?

    If I had more money, I would buy a better processor. And I would overclock it too, as others have said.

    You say that overclockers are obsessed with some penis thing, that it's all for show, that it's a waste of money. On the contrary -- I say that if you are NOT overclocking when you can, you are a chump.

    Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

  • I have a theory on the correct clock speed to recommend to friends and family when they inevitably ask me what they should buy.

    It goes like this. Take the fastest speed you've seen, divide by two, and get plenty of RAM.

    This allows for both their interest and investment in technology (if the fastest speed they have seen to date is 600mhz, they don't need to spend $1,000 on a box of metal.). The RAM should be plentiful, depending on the day. NIC for sure. The peripheral should be based on need...and that's about it.

    OS....do what you can, recommend Be if it works. [be.com]
    --

  • how is a totally not overclockable chip 'the next 300a'???? do you even read the fucking article? getting a 700mhz chip up to 750mhz is not worth it, not with that bus speed. maybe my p3-600e at 800eb is this next 300a. maybe slashdotters shouldn't be talking about hardware.

    Obviously you only read the other article, where the gain wasn't indeed much. But you missed the other one where four 700 MHz and one 650MHz Durons were all successfully overclocked to 950 MHz. That is IMO quite a difference. ;)

  • This is just flat wrong.
    An OC'd CPU with peltier and watercooled heatsink is still cheaper than a top of the line cpu, but will perform like one.

    On top of that, if you don't want to put in the time/effort/money to build that rig, you can just OC without it but not go as high. Most Celeron 533's will do 800mhz without additional cooling measures. Thats more performance for no additional cost. Consider that CPU can be purchased for around $100, and you have just saved yourself about $300 over buying a retail 800mhz cpu.

    Although people say an OC'd cpu will not last as long, after 5 years of OC'ing nearly a dozen CPU's I have yet to see longevity of the CPU become a problem. Generally speaking, if you are going to burn them out it is going to happen when you are experimenting in your intitial setup, and even that is extremely rare.
  • Yes I have been mulling that over in my mind, and it is enticing, but too expensive.

    If I add the cost of a new MB, and the PC-133 I would need (just have pc-100 now...:( ) it comes out to $350 or $400 total, compared to $120 for the FC-PGA Celeron533 upgrade.

    Like I said before, I'm poor, and that extra $250 is prohibitively expensive.
    That said, anybody want to hire a Network Administrator with 4 years experience? I'm willing to relocate.. ;)

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The duron's L1 cache is 128k. The L2 cache is 64k. The two caches are exclusive (ie: what's in the L2 cache is not duplicated in the L1 cache).

    The power consumption isn't that big of a deal. If you're really woried about heat, perform some sort of power over area caculcation, and you'll find that it's comparable to everything else out there. It is also a good idea to note that that is peak power consumption, not average.
  • Often you'll get more mileage out of UNDERclocking the CPU, if that means you can OVERclock your PCI or AGP bus.

    True, but with locked multipliers overclocking CPU == overclocking FSB.

  • Well - if this is a problem for distributed.net, why don't they insist on everybody running the clients on machines with ECC memory only? There are tons of marginal RAM-motherboard combinations out there and the problems are sometimes as hard to spot as in the overclocking case.

    Dick size contest? Sometimes maybe but I see it more like best bang for the buck contest - my system with 2 Celerons 433 @ 507 MHz (perfectly stable also at higher speed but I prefer the safe side) was a lot cheaper as the same with non-OC P II sometime last year.

  • Weel ti's nto speeled "Athalon" yuo e-tard...

    OK, enough of that. Forget the lame K6. You will probably be able to run dual DURONS. You know what that is? Basically, dual DURON CPUs at 950MHz EACH on a 200MHz FSB. Not only that but the Duron @ 950 is kinda like an Athlon 850 or even 900 of today in most cases. AND the Duron 600 only costs $89, so CHEEL brotha, CHEEL.

  • Maybe with the language barrier they thought you were accusing them of overclocking their processors (without telling the customers).

    That would make more sense to me.
  • Here's the other gigantic e-tard of the day! SIT DOWN!!! The Duron 600 overclocks a whopping 350MHz more to 950MHz!!! And that's without mad cooling and stuff! So SIT DOWN! I remember when a 350MHz box was the fastest thing in the market man ... READ before you POST.
  • Nah you need to wait for Abit's board before you decide on anything ...
  • AMD would love to offer SMP systems, their working on the 760-MP chipset right now, that it takes time, there also offering plenty of help to third parties making chipsets, but SMP it completed. 760-MP should be due out in 4Q2000. The duron will work on 760-MP mobos, but the mobos might now be that cheap.

  • Differences between Dr. Tom and Sharky Extreme (Score:3)

    by aabrown1971 ( 188670 ) on Saturday June 24, 2000 @09:26AM (#979400)
    First off... This thread is supposed to be about Dr. Tom's and Sharky Extreme's articles, not about the overclocking debate. If you do it, great! If you don't, *who cares*! I've been running OC since I bumped my 486 DX2-66 up to 80Mhz, and have _never_ blown up a chip. Nowadays, with temp monitors, and screeching alarms, you'd have to be a complete moron to blow up your chip!! Ok, enough of that. Did anyone else notice how the two articles seemed to have completely different takes? Dr. Tom seems to consider this chip the new holy grail of price/performance, and Sharky seems to compare it more to the 66Mhz bus celerons. Also, did you notice how Dr. Tom had all chips running at 950Mhz with no problems, and Sharky couldn't get past 770? I wonder what the deal was there? Maybe sharky did not want to bump up the voltage. Hopefully, we'll get a Duron to test at Redhat, but until then, I'm crossing my fingers that Dr. Tom is correct (as he almost always is!). .95Ghz for $112! Awesome!
  • Or maybe I'm just 'overstocked' on two K6-2 systems (both with FIC VA-503+ motherboard) that I regret owning.

    Really, they're okay machines, but that's all they are. Okay.
  • I guess there's nothing at all wrong with tweaking something to run less reliabliy.

    Go ahead. Have fun.

    Hope to see ya on the shoulder futzing around with your engine.
  • Sharky oc'ed with frontside bus only. I have yet to see more than 10 mhz on the EV6 bus, so needless to say, this explains the sad performance. Of course, Sharky had a stock system from AMD, down to the tnt2m64 8meg video. Tom however had the A7v, Asus' socket A entry. The board has dips to set the clock multiplier, as well as jumpers for voltage. This is why he was so successful. And although its not a large detail, he got 3 700's and a 650 to 950.
  • has anyone notice their karma decreasing for no reason since the new /. code was put in place??
    Uhh, I think maybe this has been happening since before the new code (but maybe I'm just remembering wrong). In any case, the same thing has happened to me. I didn't think of it as a problem, though... The slashdot docs say karma is "mostly the sum of moderation" which means something else is a factor in there, and that, I assume, is what decreases it.

    Anybody who's read the moderation code will probably know whether this is intended behavior... anyone?

  • Speaking of overclocking AMD chips... Check this thread out: http://discussions. hardwarecentral.com/Forum11/HTML/008273.html [hardwarecentral.com] :)

  • AMD may have started out as an Intel licencee, as Intel wanted a second source. When Intel felt AMD was starting to compete with them they refused to licence their designs and bus to AMD. Result - Athlon and Duron with its Alpha based EV6 bus - no Intel IP there, and funnily enough free of Intel IP AMD is now the speed champion!

    So gripe at AMD's history if you want to, but today's Athlon and Duron are the fastest processors you can buy.

  • The difference is that the morons at Sharkey Extreme were trying to overclock the Duron by raising the bus speed. But wonder of wonders! AMD chips are not crippled by the multiplier lock like the Intel ones (do the sharkey guys even know that?). Tom actually got the Asus board that allows you to switch the multiplier and core voltage. So you can set the 650MHz chip (6.5x100) to 950MHz (9.5x100) by changing the multiplier. Can't do that to Intel CPUs.

    I find that in general, Sharkey is pretty low on content. I'd trust Tom over Sharkey any time.

    ___
  • *shrug* I never went to college and I was originally hired as a PC repair tech. I got the job as a network admin by just doing what needed to be done when it needed doing. As our Internet business grew I took on all the work of that until it is now all that I do, here I am a few years later doing a different job for the same money.

    I really am good at what I do even though I'm untrained, but what is a poor degreeless guy to do?

    heh.. life story. yeah.. its the weekend.

  • That's very good to hear. At least AMD isn't sitting on their laurels.
  • ... but there was a article that Tom wrote over something that I believe he fudge the results.

    I told my friend that I like Tom's but he told me of this incident and hasn't been back since.


    ChozSun [e-mail] [mailto]
  • Actually, I heard that the multiplier is locked on Durons*, so the only option is to overclock the FSB. Therefore, it is valid for Sharky Extreme to do their overclocking tests in the way normal people will have access to.

    Review sites often get engineering samples, which are not clock-locked, which is probably how Dr Tom Pabst got his Duron to 950. Also, Dr Tom pulls more weight than Sharky in OEM and IT circles, so if I were AMD and I had two engineering samples, I'd probably send the better one to Dr Tom too.

    *OCI claims to be releasing a Socket A motherboard that lets you change the CPU multiplier on any Duron/Thunderbird, but most won't be able to. With Athlon Classics and Slot A Thunderbirds, you have to use a GoldFingers device to change the multiplier (or a saudering(sp?) iron). It's kinda hard to stick a GoldFingers onto a socketed CPU.

    Everyone always says that speculation isn't worth shit, but I'd really rather someone gave me their speculation than their shit.
  • Furthermore, Intel is practically forcing serious celeron owners to overclock by still putting Celerons on the 66Mhz FSB. You buy a celeron, you set the bus to standard 100Mhz, all your peripherals are running standard and you have a nice fast stable system. Often, you don't even need cooling.

    At the rate CPUs become obsolete, CPU longevity lost to overclocking is not important. 7 years down to 5 years. Big deal.
  • I worked in a lab in 1986-7 that did a lot of analog circuit design using SPICE. We had a 6MHz IBM AT and bought a cute little board that fit nicely on the back of the machine and plugged into the crystal socket (IIRC). It had a knob on it that allowed you to control the clock speed.

    8MHz was easy to get, 10MHz was unreliable, and sometimes you could run up to 9MHz.

    Boy, it's a pretty sad feeling to be old enough to tell "back-when" stories.
  • Does the chip use that much energy? Gee, I should better watch out then :)
  • Actually, the sample Tom got WAS multiplier locked. The thing is, the chip just tells the motherboard it's "requested" multiplier, and then the motherboard decides whether or not to follow this. According to Tom's review, it IS possible to override the multiplier lock, at least on the Asus motherboard he had.

    Tasty, eh?
  • A case of trollism. BUT, from a serious level, the whole theory of PCMCIA is a kludge. I know...I've worked with it from a hardware level. Both my PCMCIA cards work fine with Linux...worked out of the box with Slackware. Although I am always amazed that PCMCIA products work at all.
  • That's really the best of both worlds. Since the motherboard can read what the processor wants, you still can't sell overclocked processors as the real thing, but people can stil overclock their processor all they want.

    AMD and Intel have always justified clock-locking by saying it's for protecting consumers from aftermarking.
  • Guys, This was an incredibly interesting thread. It was nice to find out there are still people out there who aren't interested in just throwing "flame-balls". I will try to find out if Dr. Tom has fudged any of his results. My guess is probably not. He's a very nice, well meaning guy, but we've all bent a few rules in our time, so who knows? If any of y'all ever have any Redhat questions, or would like to participate in our beta program, feel free to email me at "abrown@redhat.com". -Aaron
  • Just testing my sig.

    --

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