Athlon XP/MP vs. Phenom

I'm still running an ancient Athlon MP:

http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/currentcpu.jpg

I want to upgrade. I'm thinking about a Phenom 9100e, because I want the low
wattage (65 watt vs. 125 watt). But that processor runs at only 1.8 GHz core,
which is the same clock speed as my Athlon MP.

My question is this-- for applications that only make use only a single core,
would a Phenom core give much better performance than an Athlon Thunderbird core
at the same clock frequency? (I do use some applications, such as Maya, that
can benifit well from 4 cores, but I'm wondering about simpler, single-core
apps).

Thye Phenom iwth a application that uses only one core will be as fast if
not faster than your old Athlon MP.
"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
...
I'm still running an ancient Athlon MP:

http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/currentcpu.jpg

I want to upgrade. I'm thinking about a Phenom 9100e, because I want the
low
wattage (65 watt vs. 125 watt). But that processor runs at only 1.8 GHz
core,
which is the same clock speed as my Athlon MP.

My question is this-- for applications that only make use only a single
core,
would a Phenom core give much better performance than an Athlon
Thunderbird core
at the same clock frequency? (I do use some applications, such as Maya,
that
can benifit well from 4 cores, but I'm wondering about simpler,
single-core
apps).

About 30-40% faster.
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On Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:46:47 -0500, Darren Garrison wrote:

On Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:46:47 -0500, Darren Garrison wrote:

I'm still running an ancient Athlon MP:

http://webpages.charter.net/garrison6328/currentcpu.jpg

I want to upgrade. I'm thinking about a Phenom 9100e, because I want
the low wattage (65 watt vs. 125 watt). But that processor runs at only
1.8 GHz core, which is the same clock speed as my Athlon MP.

According to your link, you've either changed the default multiplier to 11
and a FSB of 166, or you don't really have a 2200+ MP. Doesn't really
matter since you have a Tbred B core. Running it at only 1830MHz is a
waste of power. It should run at about 2200MHz easily. You can do this by
either increasing the multiplier to 13 (2166MHz)or 13.5 (2250MHz), or
raising the FSB to 200MHz if your board supports it. Either way would give
you about a 20% increase in cpu speed.

My question is this-- for applications that only make use only a single
core, would a Phenom core give much better performance than an Athlon
Thunderbird core at the same clock frequency? (I do use some
applications, such as Maya, that can benifit well from 4 cores, but I'm
wondering about simpler, single-core apps).

I'm not sure if you'd get much benefit from a 1.8GHz single core phenom,
but you'd certainly see a great overall performance increase. You might
want to consider an X2 cpu. They are cheaper than dirt now and you can get
a higher speed X2 for next to nothing. Fry's just had a phenom capable
board with an X2 5600+ (65W, 2.9GHz) on sale for $65.99. They were out
when I sent my wife to get one, but she got a raincheck. It's just a spare
anyway. Now that would be a tremendous increase over your current cpu in
all aspects.

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On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 08:33:51 +0000 (UTC), Wes Newell
wrote:

According to your link, you've either changed the default multiplier to 11
and a FSB of 166, or you don't really have a 2200+ MP. Doesn't really
matter since you have a Tbred B core. Running it at only 1830MHz is a
waste of power. It should run at about 2200MHz easily. You can do this by
either increasing the multiplier to 13 (2166MHz)or 13.5 (2250MHz), or
raising the FSB to 200MHz if your board supports it. Either way would give
you about a 20% increase in cpu speed.

I've had some overclocking experience-- not extreme, but some. I had a Pentium
75 that I ran at 90 (I tried running at 100, but had sporadic crashes), and A
K6-2 350 that I ran at 400. So I tried adjusting the speed on this one when I
got it (on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. I played with settings, off and
on, for days. But for some reason, the board would never let me use any
settings other than the automatic. Any overclocking attempt led me to not even
reaching the BIOS screen and having to reset the CMOS via a jumper on the
motherboard. This is what the processor actually runs at/as in the automatic
settings.


I'm not sure if you'd get much benefit from a 1.8GHz single core phenom,
but you'd certainly see a great overall performance increase. You might
want to consider an X2 cpu. They are cheaper than dirt now and you can get
a higher speed X2 for next to nothing. Fry's just had a phenom capable
board with an X2 5600+ (65W, 2.9GHz) on sale for $65.99. They were out
when I sent my wife to get one, but she got a raincheck. It's just a spare
anyway. Now that would be a tremendous increase over your current cpu in
all aspects.

I've been on too tight of a budget the past few years for my usually much more
agressive upgrade schedule, so what I've been looking at is the mobo/CPU/memory
combo deals available on pricewatch.com. The available deals are cheaper than
what I can get packaging all the components seperately. At first I was looking
at an Athlon X2 bundle for around $100 that comes with a mobo with an AGP slot
so I could continue using my current monitors (dual display, one CRT, one LCD).
But that mobo is an AM2, not an AM2+, so I'd be buing a dead upgrade path. My
next thought was to spend around $200 on a bundle with a Phenom bundle that
includes an AM2+ mobo with integrated ATI video that has both a VGA and DVI, run
the integrated video for now, and get a PCIe card later. But when I found a 65
watt Phenom 9100e quad-core for $80, that almost pushed me over the line, until
I discovered the catch with that low price-- that processor has the TLD bug.
Now, I'm trying to decide if the bug is obscure enough to live with for now, or
if I could expect to have problems with it.

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:27:14 -0500, Darren Garrison wrote:

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:27:14 -0500, Darren Garrison wrote:

I've had some overclocking experience-- not extreme, but some. I had a
Pentium 75 that I ran at 90 (I tried running at 100, but had sporadic
crashes), and A K6-2 350 that I ran at 400. So I tried adjusting the
speed on this one when I got it (on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. I
played with settings, off and on, for days. But for some reason, the
board would never let me use any settings other than the automatic. Any
overclocking attempt led me to not even reaching the BIOS screen and
having to reset the CMOS via a jumper on the motherboard. This is what
the processor actually runs at/as in the automatic settings.

Somethings not right. All MP cpu's use a default 133MHz FSB. A 2200+ MP
would have a default FSB of 133 and a 13.5 multiplier. You need to verify
the cpu model you have by the part number on the cpu itself. The MB
reports the model by the speed for K7 cpu's. The actual model can be
something totally different. A 2100+ XP will report as a 2700+ if you
raise the default FSB to 166.

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On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 19:17:11 +0000 (UTC), Wes Newell
wrote:

Somethings not right. All MP cpu's use a default 133MHz FSB. A 2200+ MP
would have a default FSB of 133 and a 13.5 multiplier. You need to verify
the cpu model you have by the part number on the cpu itself. The MB
reports the model by the speed for K7 cpu's. The actual model can be
something totally different. A 2100+ XP will report as a 2700+ if you
raise the default FSB to 166.

Okay, I DID have an Athlon XP 2600+ originally on the board. After about 2-3
years, it died. Not being able to get on-line to look for a deal, I had to look
around locally for a replacement CPU, but socket 462 was already obsolete then,
and the best I could find was a 1 GHz Sempron. Then, a few months after that, I
found a good deal at www.geeks.com. I didn't remember well which processor it
was, I was just going by what CPUZ showed it to be. But I've just checked my
Geeks account, and what I ordered was this:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SDA2600DUT3D-N

Anyway, I decided my best bet performance-wise was to go with your advice and go
for a higher-GHz value X2 instead of 1.8 GHz Phenom. I ordered this mobo
(because it has an AGP slot):

http://3btech.net/msik9alsoam2.html

And a 45w X2 5050e to run on it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103298

Plus 2 gigs of 800 MHz DDR2 (I currently have 1 GB of PC2700) and some Arctic
Silver 5. Should give me a much better system speed.

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:43:19 -0500, Darren Garrison wrote:

On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:43:19 -0500, Darren Garrison wrote:

wrote:

Somethings not right. All MP cpu's use a default 133MHz FSB. A 2200+ MP

Okay, I DID have an Athlon XP 2600+ originally on the board. After
about 2-3 years, it died. Not being able to get on-line to look for a
deal, I had to look around locally for a replacement CPU, but socket 462
was already obsolete then, and the best I could find was a 1 GHz
Sempron. Then, a few months after that, I found a good deal at
www.geeks.com. I didn't remember well which processor it was, I was
just going by what CPUZ showed it to be. But I've just checked my Geeks
account, and what I ordered was this:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SDA2600DUT3D-N

Now that makes sense.

Anyway, I decided my best bet performance-wise was to go with your
advice and go for a higher-GHz value X2 instead of 1.8 GHz Phenom. I
ordered this mobo (because it has an AGP slot):

http://3btech.net/msik9alsoam2.html

Ouch. I don't like your choice of MB's, It's not AM2+, only AM2, and an
old VIA chipset. Sata I, etc,etc. You can get an AM2+ MB with onboard
graphics for not much more if any more depending on how good a shopper you
are. No more than $20 more. AM2+ would give you an upgrade path to Phenom
if you ever wanted it. I'd look for a MB with Nvidia 7050PV or 8200
chipset. And while it'll be PCIe, well the onboard video should be
adequate.

And a 45w X2 5050e to run on it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103298

Plus 2 gigs of 800 MHz DDR2 (I currently have 1 GB of PC2700) and some
Arctic Silver 5. Should give me a much better system speed.

Rest sounds good, although I use wheel bearing grease on all my cpu's.
It's over 30 years old and still performs as good as anything else.:-)

--
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My Tivo Experience http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/tivo.htm
Tivo HD/S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm
AMD cpu help http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php

Wes Newell writes:
Plus 2 gigs of 800 MHz DDR2 (I currently have 1 GB of PC2700) and some
Arctic Silver 5. Should give me a much better system speed.

Rest sounds good, although I use wheel bearing grease on all my cpu's.
It's over 30 years old and still performs as good as anything else.:-)

Just think how delicious your system would smell if you used bacon
grease!

-Miles

--
..Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 06:17:54 +0000 (UTC), Wes Newell
wrote:

Ouch. I don't like your choice of MB's, It's not AM2+, only AM2, and an
old VIA chipset. Sata I, etc,etc. You can get an AM2+ MB with onboard
graphics for not much more if any more depending on how good a shopper you
are. No more than $20 more. AM2+ would give you an upgrade path to Phenom

I concidered that-- the other mobo I was considering was this:

http://3btech.net/bia7m2qucore.html

But I decided that I didn't want the shared video memory. Plus, by the time I
upgrade again, AM3 (or beyond) will be out, so the AM2+ mobo would still be last
generation at that time.