Testing the Processors

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

My first test was to re-overclock the original 2200+ processor I used in my initial review. However, also by request of many individuals, I used the Gigabyte motherboard that AMD supplied with the Thoroughbred processor. There was some thought that perhaps the Epox 8K3A+ motherboard had some features or power benefits that other reviewers might not have had. Even with the new motherboard, I saw nearly identical results, with the frequency reaching a staggering 2123.64 MHz, just below is what I was able to pull off on the Gigabyte KT333 motherboard.

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This next image shows a rather lengthy run of the SiSoft Sandra Burn-In Wizard running on the same machine as the 2200+ processor running at 2123 MHz! The system had been running for over 6 hours at this point!

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Overclocking the 2100+ Thoroughbred processors also turned out to be a very interesting endeavor. The first one, which we will refer to from this point on as 2100+A, is of the same core design, process and from the same fab as the 2200+ we were working with. Not much to my surprise, the fastest I was able to push the processor was 1.85 GHz: only a 117 MHz overclock. Compared to the results of the Athlon XP 2200+ we used, this is low scaling from the processor, but does fit closer to what other hardware editors have seen with their product. Here is the WCPUID screen from the 2100+A processor:

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Our third and final processor to be tested, called 2100+B from now on, showed to have better results than 2100+A. This CPU was overclocked to 151 MHz FSB with a 13.0x multiplier to get a total frequency of 1.967 GHz, just over a 200 MHz increase in speed. These results are interesting to see as the fact that the two 2100+ processors range is so broad. Even with their near identical fabrication (according to the numbers we see on the CPUs themselves), they differ in overclocking potential by 75% or so. This makes it very difficult to make any kind of broad judgment on the processors scalability.

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