Hobo_Jojo

which does the best processor for around £70?

SPelham

Haven't seen any intel processors for that price, but AMD do the following for £73.

AMD *Retail* Athlon XP 2500+ *333 FSB* Barton (1.83GHz) + AMD Heat Sink Fan 3Yr

Sorry Intel do actually have the 2.6Ghz Celeron for around that sort of money, but from personal experience I would stick with the Amd !!

[Edited by SPelham - 10/29/2003 4:11:25 PM]

Hobo_Jojo

how much of an improvement would that have over my duron 1ghz? or should i splash out a little bit more?

ChrisB

What's the rest of the PC?

chiark

AMD seems to offer better performance per pound, but when you **** fitting the heatsink up then you need a new processor - the p4 will survive even the most ham fisted.

Hobo_Jojo

its quite a low spec at the mo but im upgrading bit by bit starting with the mobo and processor, then i'l do the ram. as its currently 1ghz duron, k7s5a mobo, 256 ddr ram, abit geforce 4 mx 64m, with 2 40 gig hdd's and a nec 1300a dvd burner

Hobo_Jojo

and im perfectly capable of fitting a heatsink/fan correctly

thought it was about time i upgraded as it hasnt had anythin done since i built it quite a while ago when it was a reasonably high spec machine

Jye

chiark 'is' bias though Hobo, he still thinks Athlons have no thermal management

I have never damaged an Athlon chip fitting a HS in all my years of tinkering with them, perhaps Mr. chiark has sausage fingers

The Athlon XP 2500 is well capable of XP 3200 speeds with the right mobo and cooling, not bad for £70.

Hobo_Jojo

cool, all i need now is the money to buy one and a mobo!

what would scooby do

I had a problem with the k7s5a not accepting AMD's over 1.2GHz - mine was a version 1.0 board - you may want to check yours out first..

chiark

they have thermal management, but it ain't like a p4's. A p4 will survive and run with no heatsink. An athlon won't...

I just reckon that you get more processing for your money with AMD.

what would scooby do

Ditto, I've been running athlon xps for a while now.. deffo better value for mid-range processors..

Hobo_Jojo

what would scooby doo, im not putting it in my k7s5a, im gettin a new mobo with it with a faster fsb so i can overclock the processor

Jye

--A p4 will survive and run with no heatsink. An athlon won't...--

Course it will, the PC shuts down when thermal management kicks in so I fail to see how the chip will be damaged. This has been tested on numerous web sites.

HHxx

Have never seen a 1GHz amd run ddr ram before. But anyway, you need to change this at the same time as the mb/cpu. The clock speeds the memory will run at will be different any.

H

HHxx

ah, and don't forget a psu rated to at least 300watts.

chiark

I was going on the old tom's hardware comparison which destroyed chips unequivocally - perhaps things have got better?

From geek.com
admittedly in 2001 (!)

A while ago, Tom's Hardware posted up a comparison (complete with video) of what happens when you run some different processors without the heatsink attached. To refresh your memory, both the Athlon and Athlon MP in the test burned out and died, permanently damaged. The Pentium III chip shut off, saving itself from permanent damage, and the Pentium 4 merely slowe0d down to keep the heat below tolerances, showing itself to be the most reliable chip in the group. The Athlon MP/XP core was said to have a thermistor, but it was too slow to respond to the fast burn-up of the Athlon chips (in about four seconds). Now there is a video going around the Web of an AMD Athlon MP 1.2GHz processor that is capable of saving itself from damage when coupled with a MAX6512 temperature sensor. The video shows an Athlon MP system shut itself off before damage occurs to the Athlon MP chip when the system is powered on with no heatsink attached. Also, when the fan is turned off, the Athlon MP supposedly runs for 9 minutes playing Quake before the temperature gets too high and the system powers down. What is unclear is where this video came from, if it is legitimate, and if the temperature sensor in question (MAX6512) uses the thermal diode built into the Athlon MP. If such a setup is capable of being constructed for Athlon MP/XP motherboards, any manufacturer still shipping boards that allows burn-up is doing a big disservice to their buyers. AMDZone is pursuing this story and we'll have more info on it as it progresses. They also link you to the 9 MB video, which I have watched a few times at this point.

ScoobyDoo555

Prey tell, why would you run your CPU without a heatsink?

Genuine question?

Dan

DominicA

K7s5a runs max cpu of xp2400

Jye

From Vanshardware, which is a far better site that ol sycophant Tom's.

[i]In the AMD-produced video, we demonstrated that a system with a "Palomino" core processor could successfully and safely shutdown prior to thermal damage. That system had appropriate circuitry for monitoring the thermal diode on the motherboard. AMD used a proprietary OEM motherboard for that test... the SAME proprietary board being used by Compaq for their recently-announced Presario 8000. We anticipate that other manufacturers will be adding this functionality to their boards soon.

The Fujitsu Siemens board tested by Tom's Hardware Guide was not capable to protect against thermal runaway because it was not designed to. It was designed for system health monitoring and for throttling system fans to enable quiet operation. That's why it failed when the heatsink was removed from the processor.

Additionally, in it's own tests AMD observed that the Pentium 4 processor-based systems it tested did not continue to operate after their heat sink and fan units were removed. AMD used multiple unmodified, third-party, Intel chipset-based motherboards for its testing. The second part of the AMD videos shows the results.[/b]



edited to say: Better join us all here in 2004 chiark, not 2001





[Edited by Jye - 10/30/2003 9:15:03 AM]

chiark

I'm with the program now, thanks mate

Need advice on how to make an idiot of yourself? Just ask...

The only reason for running without a heatsink is due to failure of something critical - like the heatsink holder - or abject stupidity in fitting which I have witnessed

You learn something new every day

Cheers,
Nick.

Jye