Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[dacaw]

2600+ Replacement for 1800+

Well I finished installing a Barton-core 2600+ XP mobile in our old desktop which has a Gigabyte GA-7DX motherboard and had an AthlonXP 1800+ before.

I was going to rip out the innards and install a '64 and probably should have done so but time was a factor and I wanted it as easy as possible.

Found the GA-7DX had a new bios that supported up to 2600+ so flashed that first. Had to use XP-M because the old motherboard is only 133FSB and desktop Bartons use 166 (333 DDR) and up.

Bought the OEM processor at Newegg, amazing delivery - free overnight Fedex - for $99. Then had to go to CompUSA for those heatpads. $3.99 for 3!

Removed old heatsink and scraped off old pad, installed 2600+ w/ new pad, no problems.

Booted at 800MHz. No way in bios to change multiplier or voltage. Finally found CrystalCPUID which is amazing and allows everything to be changed including multiplier & voltage, even from a command line. Works a treat in the startup folder. So runs at 15x and 1.45v after boot. An alternative multiplier change utility, CPUMSR, just froze the machine.

Its much nicer than the old 1800+, runs a lot cooler. For video editing its that much faster that you can get a whole lot more done thanks to larger cache & multiplier.

For $110 incl tax and heatsink pad its def. a worthwhile upgrade. Its a tossup whether it would have been better to go Athlon64. I just didn't want to spend more than a couple of evenings getting everything running and there's a lot of stuff in & attached to this box. My nightmare would have been putting together a '64 and having some kind of instability pop up that could have prevented work next week.

So I think I did the right thing.