KT7A + Athlon XP-M = Fast, cool and quiet
Posted: Wed Sep 22, 2004 1:51 am
Just wanted to share a success story with you all, as I've picked up so much knowledge from here over the months.
I used to have an old Athlon TBird 1.4Ghz running at 1Ghz 1.5v that could be cooled reasonably with an AX-7 and a 5v 80mm YS-Tech "silent" fan (not sure of the model number). Load was about 56-58C.
I know I should get a new motherboard etc. but my KT7A has been good to me over the years, I'm tight and I also don't enjoy rebuilding Windows, so I've stuck with it.
I had a dig around Google, it seemed that a few people still running old boards like me were having success with XP-M's. So, I thought I'd give it a crack. At worst, if the XP-M doesn't work, I can send it back or sell it. I went ahead last week and purchased a (Barton core) XP-M 2400+.
Now, my KT7A is an old v1.0 board, so I wasn't too sure of success. First few boot attempts were a bit dodgy and I'm still not sure why - the only thing that seemed to make a big difference was the 3.3v setting which (oddly) defaults to 3.4v - knock this down to (really) 3.3v and all is well...! I also get "Unknown CPU Type" in the BIOS but wcpuid recognises the chip OK.
The main issue I have is with multipliers - I can only get up to 12x - I think I need to do a wire-trick mod on the socket to get higher ones, but I'm not really bothered... 12 x 133 = 1.6Ghz which is a big leap up from a 1Ghz TBird; that's plenty of performance for me and I'd rather keep the heat down. I also think that the larger L2 cache can't do any harm considering the slower memory my board has in comparison to more modern machines.
Voltage wise, I've only got it down to 1.35v at the moment (at 1.6Ghz) but haven't had much time to try and go any lower. The really good part is that at these settings, my temps are now just 42C under load and sub 40C idle (according to the socket thermistor, anyway), which I am very pleased with. I've taken a 75%+ performance increase and my temps have dropped by 15C!
In noise terms, this hasn't made that much of a difference to my machine. The only noticable change is that my Nexus PSU fan isn't ramping quite so high, but it was pretty low before so the difference isn't huge. I can't really lower my CPU fan anymore as it's already at 5v, but perhaps I could remove it and duct the CPU heatsink to the case fan? Noisiest component is still clearly the HD.
Overall, I am very impressed with this upgrade - the chip only cost me around £65 and has given my long-in-the-tooth machine a new lease of life!
I used to have an old Athlon TBird 1.4Ghz running at 1Ghz 1.5v that could be cooled reasonably with an AX-7 and a 5v 80mm YS-Tech "silent" fan (not sure of the model number). Load was about 56-58C.
I know I should get a new motherboard etc. but my KT7A has been good to me over the years, I'm tight and I also don't enjoy rebuilding Windows, so I've stuck with it.
I had a dig around Google, it seemed that a few people still running old boards like me were having success with XP-M's. So, I thought I'd give it a crack. At worst, if the XP-M doesn't work, I can send it back or sell it. I went ahead last week and purchased a (Barton core) XP-M 2400+.
Now, my KT7A is an old v1.0 board, so I wasn't too sure of success. First few boot attempts were a bit dodgy and I'm still not sure why - the only thing that seemed to make a big difference was the 3.3v setting which (oddly) defaults to 3.4v - knock this down to (really) 3.3v and all is well...! I also get "Unknown CPU Type" in the BIOS but wcpuid recognises the chip OK.
The main issue I have is with multipliers - I can only get up to 12x - I think I need to do a wire-trick mod on the socket to get higher ones, but I'm not really bothered... 12 x 133 = 1.6Ghz which is a big leap up from a 1Ghz TBird; that's plenty of performance for me and I'd rather keep the heat down. I also think that the larger L2 cache can't do any harm considering the slower memory my board has in comparison to more modern machines.
Voltage wise, I've only got it down to 1.35v at the moment (at 1.6Ghz) but haven't had much time to try and go any lower. The really good part is that at these settings, my temps are now just 42C under load and sub 40C idle (according to the socket thermistor, anyway), which I am very pleased with. I've taken a 75%+ performance increase and my temps have dropped by 15C!
In noise terms, this hasn't made that much of a difference to my machine. The only noticable change is that my Nexus PSU fan isn't ramping quite so high, but it was pretty low before so the difference isn't huge. I can't really lower my CPU fan anymore as it's already at 5v, but perhaps I could remove it and duct the CPU heatsink to the case fan? Noisiest component is still clearly the HD.
Overall, I am very impressed with this upgrade - the chip only cost me around £65 and has given my long-in-the-tooth machine a new lease of life!