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Thread ID: 38845 2003-10-20 07:21:00 Athlon Upgrade How High? rocketeer (4703) Press F1
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185010 2003-10-20 07:21:00 Hi

I have a DFI AD72 DDR board 266MHz and was wondering what would be the best choice in replacing my current 1200 cpu with? (bang for buck value)

What am I limited to?

Or is it best to make the jump to a FSB333 board and buy a 2600?
rocketeer (4703)
185011 2003-10-20 07:35:00 Well according to the manual you can set the FSB to 133MHz (DDR makes it 266) and the CPU muliplier up to 12.5x which would give approx 1.66GHz which equates to an Athlon 2000XP cpu. Your call.

Cheers, Babe.

p.s. the manual was Here (support.octek.com.au)
Babe Ruth (416)
185012 2003-10-20 07:37:00 Ok here (www.dfi.com.tw) is your motherboard at the motherboard manufacturer site.

And at here (www.dfi.com.tw) it looks like you can crank your board up to a Athlon 2000+ if you get that BIOS upgrade installed.
PoWa (203)
185013 2003-10-20 09:01:00 My board is "Revision A2" so a bit wary on running the bios update that refers to PCB "D".

Will any dramatic increase in speed be noticeable from going from 1200 to 2000?
rocketeer (4703)
185014 2003-10-20 09:25:00 Yea I'm guessing it will up your revision from A to D so you can get the higher processor in. D is just the latest version (www.dfi.com.tw) of the BIOS.

It doesn't look like there are any other versions of the AD72-SN motherboard so it should be sweet. If you decide to do it, remember to use a brand new floppy disk and to follow all the instructions so you don't kill your motherboard :)

As for seeing a big increase in the speed from upgrading to a 2000+ I very much doubt it. My Athlon 1.1Ghz in professional benchmarks beats out a Pentium 4 1.7Ghz. So I'm guessing your current chip is equivalent to a P4 1.8Ghz~. This is around the time AMD starting coming out with their new rating system. If you look at the actual clock speed of the 2000+ chip its only running at 1.67GHz. Thats only 470Mhz more than your current chip, and only a relative speed increase of 200-300Mhz seeing your chip is about the same as a P4 1.8Ghz~ in benchmarks.

That small increase in speed is not worth the money you would pay for it. I would recommend a new motherboard and cpu :) What's your budget?
PoWa (203)
185015 2003-10-20 11:19:00 hmmmm.

The amd cpu rating is based on the different scores reached in benchmarks and then compared back to the scores made by there range of cpu's made before they started rating there cpu's on performence rather then on mhz.

By that reasoning the 2000+ performs the equilnvent work of a cpu that is 800hhz faster then the 1200mhz cpu that came before it.

so,ya,big increase in speed,even if not in mhz.

The 2000+ will kill the 1200.
metla (154)
185016 2003-10-21 00:25:00 Performance pass rates for various cpus

www.passmark.com
kiwibeat (304)
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