athlon mobile 2600+

hi,

i bought an AMD athlon XP mobile 2600 45W barton oem processor.

i put it in my pc and it booted to windows fine however there are a few things i need cleared up:
1)when i right click on my computer and click properties it lists my processor as mobile AMD athlon(tm) XP 2500+ 2.00ghz . this is abit weird as on my receipt it even says 2600 . has the supplier screwed me over or is this a common error?
2)i read that mobiles were meant to run at 1.45v normally. however when i go into bios it is running at 1.550v and this is the lowest setting i can select. is this likely to be the motherboard not supporting voltages as low as 1.45 or is there a way to fix this? (i have a MSI KT3V mobo)
3) i have a coolermaster aero 7 cpu fan and i am getting 42 (degrees celcius) idle and 47 full load (running prime 95)are these normal temperatures or are these abit high (bear in mind this is running at 1.550vcore) i am thinking of overclocking my cpu and i was wondering what max fully loaded temperature i should stop at with my overclock?(bear in mind i dont want to shorten the lifespan of the processor)

thanks

matt

Try getting a BIOS update - see if this fixes the voltage issue.

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hi,

im kinda a noob at this overclocking buisiness so you will have to excuse me.

i think that i can control the multiplier. i went into the bios then set the multiplier at x9.0 (with fsb 133). then i save the settings and i go into windows and it still says it is clocked at 2.00ghz and in 3dmark it also says it is clocked at 2 ghz. then i restart and go back into the bios and it still said the multiplier is at x9.0. does this mean i can chage the multiplier?

as to your second point i have 768mb DDR pc 2700 ram. it is just bog standard ram and not any special overclocking stuff. what sort of impact will this have on my overclock?

thanks

matt

hi,

so do you think i should worry about windows only showing it as an 2500 instead of a 2600 if it is clocked at 2.0ghz also how should i find out the actaul clock speed? as windows does not seem to be altering when i change the multiplier

answers to any of my previous questions in my last post would be appreciated (from any one)

matt

hi,

i am kinda worried about the multiplier. the defaults are for a 133fsb with x15 multiplier giving me a 2.0ghz system. So i went into bios and underclocked it just to check that i actually could change the multiplier. i set the multiplier at x11 and then went into windows opened up cpuz and it said i still had the x15 multiplier on a 2ghz. so i restarted and went back into bios and the x11 multiplier was still selected. i am very confused :S
does this mean my multiplier is locked?
does anyone know why this might be happening and if so how to fix it?
also do all athlon mobiles come unlocked? because i thought this was the case and if so it would make sense that this one was locked

thanks for the cpuz link that helps me alot

matt

if you right click on my computer then click properties then it opens up a window and at the bottom of that it tells me my processor , clock speed and how much ram i have. although now i am using cpuz to get my readings as it gives alot more detail.

thanks

matt

:S mine is pissing me off my mobo is setting my multiplier at the max what ever do you know why this might be? (my motherboard max multiplier is x15)
also another weird thing i have noticed is that my mobo only goes from 1.550v to 1.675 volts (something around that) this is quite a small band could a bios flash help to increase this range?

thanks

matt

1.) The multiplier is unlocked, the board can't tell what speed the CPU is. Set it as desired, these things are known to go to at least 2.2GHz.
2.) The Voltage ID pin arangements are different between Mobile and Desktop CPU's. The board probably thinks 1.550v is the right setting because it's not programed to use the alternate assignments. And most boards only allow you to adjust the voltage upward. 1.550v is a safe voltage for the CPU, and will help with stability should you decide to overclock.
3.) Voltage is a more significant factor to heat than clock speed, I'd probably try 2.2GHz using the current 1.550v setting and check the temperatures at that setting. If you don't see anything over 55C, I'd probably kick it up to around 1.65v and try for a max overclock speed. 65C is the highest temperature I'd tollerate, although the CPU can tollerate more.

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thanks alot crashman for ur advice in what level to overclock it too. at the moment the only problem i have is that the multiplier is set at x15 and is refusing to change. is this a problem or shall i just go for 2.2ghz with x15 multiplier and 147fsb or is their a better way to hit 2.2ghz?

thats exactly what all my other posts have been about ive been having alot of trouble with my multipliers. basically i go into biosa and it lets me alter the multiplier (for instance i tried x9) but i go into windows and then cpuz reports that it is still using x15 so i reset go back into the bios but it is still set on x9. what is going wrong here?

could it be my mobo coz its pretty old MSI KT3V MS-6712? because the only range i have for my voltages is between 1.550 and about 1.675.

my ram is pretty crap 768DDR PC2700 (no special brand probably not particuarly good quality) am i right that this will limit me to 166 fsb anyway?

thanks

matt

hi,

ok thanks alot ill post 2moro as to whether i have any sucess with any multipliers in the list at all

thanks

matt

hi,

i tried crashmans idea of trying every multipliers and tbh i got bored after a while but i tried x6 (lowest my mobo will go) , x7 , x9 , x11 ,x14 and none of these worked i had the same results as before and when i went into cpuz it still reported the cpu using a x15 multiplier

i also tried someone elses idea of trying to change the multiplier while the fsb is set at 100. this did not help and cpuz reported the correct fsb value i changed to 100 but the multiplier was still at x15 :S

wusy i cannot get the multiplier to go to anything apart from x15 so my board is certainly not having the problem of setting it back to the lowest setting as it is constantly on the highest setting (x15)

also if it is not possible to change my multiplier in the BIOS how / where should i change it?
how has everyone else with a mobile altered their multipliers?

if their is no way to change the multiplier will it still be possible for me to overclock my cpu by simply keeping the multiplier at x15 and upping the fsb? and how succesful would this be?

also what are the stock athlon mobile 2600 cpu's fsb and multiplier? beacuse when i got mine its fsb was 133 and the multiplier was x15 what were other peoples set to when they put it in their boards for the first time?

thanks

matt

hi,

sorry if this is really simple but what does the lack of an agp lock imply for me? does this mean i may have problems putting my fsb up? and if i do this it muck muck up the graphics card? what sort of limitations do you think this might put on my overclock?

thanks

matt

A few things.
1 Most people can change the multiplier in bios.
2 Without an AGP lock, your fsb clock is limited. The agp is run in ratio with the fsb, so at 133, your agp is 66, at 140, it's 70, 150 = 75 etc. Many of today's graphics cards have trouble after 70. Your pci bus is half of the agp bus. It can also cause problems, though usually higher than 35.
3 All is not lost. Your chipset/ board does support 166 chips, so you may be able to use the 5:2:1 divider. With that the agp and pci are at 2/5s and 1/5th respectively. I'm not saying you should try to boot at 166 X 15. That's just not likely with the available voltage. However, if you set the voltage as high as you can, you may be able to run at 160 fsb. See if that is an option in bios. This should give you a slight underclock in agp, and pci..
Just so you know, a higher fsb increases the memory bandwidth, which does give better performance. A chip running 2ghz with a 133 fsb will perform better than a chip @ 2ghz with 100 fsb, but not as well as a chip @ 2ghz, with a 166 fsb. That is part of the reason some prefer an fsb OC to a multiplier OC.

You dont have to choose the divider, it is automatic, depends on the fsb you use. With a 100 fsb, the divider is 3:2:1 with 133 it's 4:2:1, with 166, it's 5:2:1, and for 200, it's 6:2:1 With most KT333 boards, the shift in dividers, from 4 to 5 comes someplace around 160 fsb.

hi,

ok today i decided to give up over changing my multiplier and start overclocking by changing the fsb. (bear in mind that the multiplier is always set on 15 in the following results

on each step to check if it was stable i ran the half life 2 stress test (in cs source), 3d mark 01, 3dmark 03, then 3dmark 05. My results are not very reliable as i think sometimes i had cpuz and smartfan running but othertimes i may not have so i would not concentrate to hard on my results.

first of all i kept the vcore on 1.550 and put up the fsb to see how far it would go.

fsb Mult Mhz hl2(fps) 3d01 3d03 3d05
---------------------------------------------------
150 x15 2255 66.26 14695 5586 2219
155 x15 2325 66.35 11788 5606 2140
160 x15 2400 65.99 12339 5628 N/A

when i tried the 160 fsb hl2 , 3d01 , 3d03 all errored the first time then i restarted the programs and tried again and they worked. when i tried to run 3d05 it ran for a while the suddenly my computer restarted so i decided to turn down my fsb. after this i put my fsb down to 155 x15 and i ran prime95 this gave me an error after 19 mins. the temperatues were very low usually around 40 degrees C under load

so i put my vcore up to 1.675 (the highest my mobo will support) and tried some higher settings for my fsb.

fsb Mult Mhz hl2(fps) 3d01 3d03 3d05
---------------------------------------------------
160 x15 2400 65.22 14645 5601 2124
163 x15 2445 66.55 15145 5619 2140
166 x15 2505 67.12 15474 5624 2143

all these settings booted in to windows and ran all the system tests without any errors. however then i decided to run prime95 to check the real stability of the system and with the fsb at 166 (it showed up as 167 in cpuz) x15 prime 95 gave errors after 0 mins. so next i put the fsb back down to 163 x15 and i am currently running prime95 error free atm with windows detecting my cpu at 2.44ghz and cpuz reporting 2445mhz. smartfan is saying the cpu is running at 47 degrees C while running prime 95, playing music and writing this post.

unfortunately i feel my mobo is holding me back greatly by not allwowing me to change the multiplier and limiting my voltage to 1.550 - 1.675

however i am fairly pleased with my results so far what do the look like to you?
all the benchmarking software seems to be giving me very mixed signals over my systems gain from the extra overclock. is these extra mhz actaully going to be giving me a good performance boost?
have your got any more advice about my overclock / how to improve it?

thanks

matt