Pentium 4/2200 vs. Athlon XP 2000+

Overclocking: AMD Athlon With 1850 MHz

Pentium 4/2200 in detail.

The "old" Pentium 4/2000 with the Willamette core.

The days of easy overclocking are long gone, at least with Intel. With the introduction of a fixed multiplier (burned into special SRAM registries of the CPU), the manufacturer has put the clamps on ever since PIII 'Coppermine'. So the only possibility left for overclocking the Pentium 4/2200 is to overclock the FSB. Still, this makes little sense, because the chipset usually increases the clock speeds of PCI-ports and the AGP as well, putting them out of spec. This frequently results in the system sporadically showing signs of instable behavior with the operating system. For this reason, we did not overclock the Pentium 4/2200. It's a different story with the AMD Athlon XP 2000+, whose clock multiplier can be unlocked by making a few modifications to the CPU. Still, most cases are beset by strict limitations. With the use of a water-cooling system, we were able to increase the CPU clock to 1850 MHz, simply by raising the FSB clock from 133 MHz to 147 MHz. This clock speed would correspond an Athlon XP 2300+.

An Athlon XP 2000+ overclocked to 1850 MHz.