Overclocking and System Setup

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

Even at the 1.1 GHz level, the Duron is still specified to run at a 100 MHz front-side bus speed. While of course this can be changed by overclocking the chip with an appropriate motherboard or changing the bridges, this was not done for the benchmarks here. I felt the processor needed to be tested in its intended fashion, as those of you who purchase low-cost systems will probably not be the power-hungry overclockers that purchase the more expensive systems.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, though! 🙂 In fact, I was able to get the 1.1 GHz Duron to run 1.4 GHz with little difficulty. Most experience overclockers will tell you that pushing the Duron’s to a 133 MHz FSB is nearly a shoe-in – and it certainly proved true here. Running at 133 MHz X 10.5 brought us to 1.4 GHz with a good heatsink and fan combination. Obviously, this is budget CPU buyer’s dream come true. Your results may vary, so do your homework first!

I do want to point a couple things out on this test system and setup here. Many of you will notice that the numbers that we come up with here are very different (sometimes higher, sometimes lower) than we have previously gotten. Well, for at least the next three reviews, we changed several factors of the test setup, so the previous numbers are not valid.

First, we are using an AMD-supplied Gigabyte 7DX motherboard with as of yet unavailable bios for Morgan and Palomino core support. A new GeForce 3 card was also used, though we are using the same detonator drivers, so that should not make a considerable difference. Most importantly, is our switch to Windows XP as the base operating system for the test. I have been using XP here for a couple weeks now and am very impressed with the operating systems stability and performance. Since I think it will be catching on in the home market fairly soon, I thought it best to use XP for our current reviews (and probably future ones, as well).

Also I made a switch to a new memory brand. TwinMOS was kind enough to send over a sample of their PC2100 DDR memory and I must say I have been very impressed with its speed and reliability. The memory was able to overclock well, reaching speeds similarly found in Crucial memory and the memory out performed it in benchmarks as well. You can head over to TwinMOS to find out more about them and where to buy some if you are interested.

So, in summary, please do not compare the test results we get today and in the future with ones previous of this. All the numbers you see in the graphs will show them being tested on the hardware below, so they are accurate. Here is the test system in its entirety:

Test System Setup
CPU 1 x 1.1 GHz AMD Duron Processor
1 x 1.0 GHz AMD Duron Processor
1 x 1.4 GHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird Processor
Memory 1 x 256MB TwinMOS PC2100 DDR DRAM
Hard Drive 20.5GB 7200 RPM IBM EIDE
Video Card GeForce 3
Video Drivers Detonator 12.90
Operating System Windows XP

Tests:

Quake III: Arena
3DMark 2001
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bench
SiSoft Sandra CPU Bench
Content Creation Winstone 2001
Business Winstone 2001
4 different SPEC view perf tests
Cachemem
ScienceMark

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