Which Athlon for a low heat iDEQ 200N ?

[rototo]

Hi, first post here!

I want to build a small, quiet and cool PC to put on my desk. Most of my needs should be filled with a 1GHz or lower Athlon and the iDEQ 200N integrated GeForce 4 MX, but I'd also like to be able to play stuff like Half Life 2 when it's out. (my "needs" include DVD/DivX playback, eMule, and playing/programming low-end 2D/3D games)

So, I was thinking of putting an underclocked/undervolted mobile Athlon XP-M into an iDEQ 200N, in order to lower the heat as much as possible. And when HL2 is out, I could put the XP back at its normal speed or even overclock it, if necessary.

What I'd like to know is if the Athlon XP-M is a good choice, or if a standard Athlon would do, and which model/speed I should get...

I've spent the last 2 days looking for information about the nForce2 chipset, Athlon CPUs and underclocking/undervolting, and it's really complicated for a newbie like me :-}.

I've found an Athlon XP-M 2200 for sale at 75 euros here in France, but after thinking a bit I realised that:
- Frequency = 1.8GHz
- FSB = 133/266 MHz
- Multiplier = 13.5

...and I've read that it's impossible to select a lower multiplier than 13.5 with the iDEQ 200N, if the CPU multiplier is >= 13.5. Is it right?

That means I'd have to lower the FSB in order to underclock it, which would reduce the performance quite a bit... or wouldn't it?

If I could make the XP-M 2200 run at [email protected] (I have no clue if it can), the new power consumption would be 45*(100/133)*(1.3/1.45)² = 27.2W. Right? (the store that sells this CPU states it's 45W)

That sounds like a decent drop from the original wattage... but I wonder if performance would drop a lot too.

...

So I guess that basically my question is: what CPU should I get for an iDEQ 200N, that can both run HL2 and be underclocked to produce low heat/noise?
(note that I don't expect to be able to play such a game at full quality setting)

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the long post ;-).

[dukla2000]

Howdy and welcome.

First - I recently put together an iDeq 200V and was really impressed by the internal design (for airflow, cooling, cabling etc). I think they are great. The 200V has 60mm CPU & case fans, the psu is 70mm, all of which are not the best starting place for quietness but at least Speedfan works fine on the 200V.

...and I've read that it's impossible to select a lower multiplier than 13.5 with the iDEQ 200N, if the CPU multiplier is >= 13.5. Is it right?

That means I'd have to lower the FSB in order to underclock it, which would reduce the performance quite a bit... or wouldn't it?

That is a common problem with many Athlon mobos. But also check the manual and/or someone here may respond: the 200V had no over/underclocking options (VCore or multiplier) at all, and the fsb was a jumper with 100/133/166 choices. So you may not have as much flexibility as you would like, other than the "wire trick" as per ocinside.

[rototo]

Thanks for your answer dukla2000.
From all the articles I've read about the 200N, the bios lets you change Vcore (between 1.3V and 2.0V), FSB (by 1MHz steps between 100 and 200MHz), and the multiplier. However if I understood correctly, it won't let you drop the multiplier below 13.5 if the CPU default multiplier is 13.5 or above.

So, my best guess is that I should get an Athlon XP-M 2000+. At 1667MHz, its default should be 12.5x133MHz, which means I could underclock it by lowering the multiplier without changing the FSB :-) (or even maybe increasing the FSB for increased performance? Not sure, I'm a complete newbie with this).

Unfortunately, the only 2000+ XP-M I've seen so far is priced 90 euros, 15 euros more than the 2200+ ! Argh.

[AZBrandon]

I don't know how the BIOS is different on the 200N versus the 200V, but on the 200V, it appears not to truly support any of the Athlon Mobile processors. Mine shows up as a 1.55v 6xFSB processor. Using jumpers along with the BIOS you can set the FSB to anything from 100 to 199Mhz, although the NIC stops working with the FSB higher than 190Mhz. Kind of weird..

At any rate, if you ran it like that, say, 6x185Mhz you'd have a 1110Mhz processor. If you're planing to run Linux, that's pretty much where you'll be stuck, unless you can find a program to change the multiplier on the fly from linux. Under windows, you can get a util called CPUMSR that lets you change the multiplier and voltage on the fly. On the 200V, it doesn't seem to honor the voltage changes, but I can certainly change the multiplier to my heart's content.

At least on my 200V, multipliers from 3 to 13.5 are available. This means you can clock as low as 300Mhz (!!!) by doing 3x100 or in theory, as high as 13.5x199 for 2686Mhz. Since the 200V doesn't have any voltage options, the highest I've been able to go and test at Prime95 stable is 177x11.5=2034Mhz. So to sum it up.. on the 200V with a mobile 2400+ processor, multipliers from 3 to 13.5 are possible via software.

[plympton]

I don't know how the BIOS is different on the 200N versus the 200V...At least on my 200V, multipliers from 3 to 13.5 are available. This means you can clock as low as 300Mhz (!!!) by doing 3x100 or in theory, as high as 13.5x199 for 2686Mhz. Since the 200V doesn't have any voltage options, the highest I've been able to go and test at Prime95 stable is 177x11.5=2034Mhz. So to sum it up.. on the 200V with a mobile 2400+ processor, multipliers from 3 to 13.5 are possible via software.

The only problem is that you can't go into S3 Standby if you've messed with the multiplier in ANY way! At least not on my 200V with Mobile 2400+. OK, so it WOULD go into Standby mode - just never wake up!!

I ended up with a higher-power Desktop 2600+, because entering standby mode (3-7 watts) was much more important than the 10 or so watts I was saving when the machine wasn't asleep.

-Dan
PS: If I'm wrong, tell me how you got it to work!

[AZBrandon]

The only problem is that you can't go into S3 Standby if you've messed with the multiplier in ANY way! At least not on my 200V with Mobile 2400+. OK, so it WOULD go into Standby mode - just never wake up!!

I just tried it and mine comes out of standby just fine! Except.. it never fully goes IN to standby. I still have mine sitting on a kill-a-watt, conveniently enough. Folding, it draws 85w. Idle is around 68w. In "standby" it dropped to 41w, so it definitely did something but you could hear it spinning the HD, fans, and powering who knows what else to manage to still draw 41w. So uh, yeah standby doesn't seem to work on mine either.

[rototo]

But the 200V and the 200N don't have the same mobo/chipset... I wish someone with a 200N could comment on this multiplier thing.

[plympton]

I just tried it and mine comes out of standby just fine! Except.. it never fully goes IN to standby. I still have mine sitting on a kill-a-watt, conveniently enough. Folding, it draws 85w. Idle is around 68w. In "standby" it dropped to 41w, so it definitely did something but you could hear it spinning the HD, fans, and powering who knows what else to manage to still draw 41w. So uh, yeah standby doesn't seem to work on mine either.

What you have is S1 Standby Mode, and not the desired S3 (Suspend to RAM) Standby mode. You have to enable it in the BIOS (S3), and then find a program called "dumppo.exe" (search Google to find it) You probably installed XP with S1 enabled (Default?) and NOT S3 enabled, therefore, XP believes all you have is S1 capability, and never changes that belief, no matter what the BIOS says.

Mine sleeps like a baby now - though I'm running an AthlonXP 2600+ desktop processor, not the 2400+ Mobile process I intended to use... .

See this link for what you need to do:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&l ... 26tab%3Dwg

> I downloaded dumppo.exe from the website given earlier. Copied it to the
> C/Windows/System32 folder.
>
> Ran the following at the command prompt
>
> dumppo admin/ cap
>
> It said I had the following sleep capabilities: S1, S4 and S5
>
> I restarted, entered the BIOS setup and in the Power Menu, enabled ACPI
> Suspend to RAM.
>
> Rebooted and tried the Standby mode. Results were the same, fans still
> running.
>
> Ran the following at the command prompt
>
> dumppo admin/ cap
>
> It said I had the following sleep capabilities: S1, S3, S4 and S5
> (note the addition of S3)
>
> I then ran the following at the command prompt
>
> dumppo admin/ ac minsleep=3
>
> It reported back that my minimum sleep mode was S3
>
> I tried Standby again. What do you know, it worked. No fans running, No CD
> unit power. It also returned to normal operation, exiting the Standby mode.
>
> I have no idea what prompted this problem. I know positively that it worked
> before, although I don't use Standby very much. The only recent changes to
> my system were SP1 and a Photo Processing program. I know that I never had
> to enable ACPI Suspend to RAM before.
>
> That's it

You can find Dumppo.exe here: http://www.bellamyjc.net/download/dumppo.exe

-Dan

[sonofdbn]

what CPU should I get for an iDEQ 200N, that can both run HL2 and be underclocked to produce low heat/noise?

Doesn't look like anyone has addressed the graphics issue. I have a 200N, and I could NEVER get it to run Halo using the onboard graphics without the game crashing within seconds. (From other forums it appears that the Nforce 2 boards are very picky about the RAM they use, so this might have been my problem.)

For HL2, particularly given that it now looks like it might only be released next year, you might not get a decent gaming experience unless you also get a separate graphics card. And given the power and cooling requirements of the newest GPUs, this might be another source of noise.