SiSoft Sandra CPU Benchmark

SiSoft Sandra MMX Benchmark

As we can see, higher FSB is king, though it is a close call between 166FSB and 200FSB.

SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmark

Here, the differences are more apparent. The extra FSB gives a nice bump in memory performance at a 1/1 ratio.

Unreal Tournament 2003, Min Detail, 640x480

As expected, the extra FSB scales with the performance accordingly. Now, we mentioned earlier about FSB being more important than pure clock speeds in some cases, and if you look at the 15x133 and 11.5x166 scores, this proves our point. I felt it was worth mentioning since I've seen some people more concerned with clock speeds (and low FSB) than trying to find a balance between the two.

Reader Tips:

Some readers have submitted a couple tips that may be worth noting. Here's some of the better ones:

EvlMinion writes: "Here's a heads-up for you, regarding whether nForce2 boards ignore the multiplier lock on Bartons with the new package. The Asus A7N8X, at least, is still capable of unlocking the new Bartons. I'm running a 2500+ with the new package, and have been able to successfully adjust the multiplier."

Omonk writes: "See with Athlon XP processors, (specifically Barton, I don't know about others) the 2500+ has the L3 bridge already closed, therefore you have access to multipliers 5.5-12.5 on most motherboards that allow for multiplier adjustments. (nforce2 for example).

However, a lot of the nForce2 boards do not read the 5th multiplier bit, so it will only give you a range of 5.5-12.5 OR 13 and up. Not all multipliers. SO with that bridge closed, you cannot select 13 or higher on a llot of motherboards. (specifically in my experience the ASUS A7N8X, but I believe this affects a lot more.)

So you have to CUT that L3 bridge to gain access to 13 and up. (That bridge is CUT for the athlon 3000+ for example.) So for people in my situation, (there are a lot of us in the nforcehq forums...) I am running PC2700 so I cannot get my FSB up to 200(x2), (175 (x2) Stable) soI would have to cut that bridge on my Barton 2500 to get access to the higher multipliers as I'm hitting the ceiling at 12.5, and I'm sure my processor will go farther than 2.19 with no voltage increase. Granted I COULD run in synchronous mode, but the performance hit on doing so is actually pretty large. More so than just leaving it as it is."

Ambian writes: "Thought I'd share with ya the 'other' way of unlocking a TBred. Just squeeze in a little conductive paint between these two pins, and... Voila! Wait a tick, those pins have a little bit of a ZIF in between them. The solution? Paint the motherboard pins together! Just pull out the motherboard, take a pin and draw a line of car rear window defogger repair paint between those two points and you're set! No mess, no tape, just a simple one step process."

Thanks for the tips guys (or gals).

Final Words

One thing I want to make clear is our multiplier and FSB options aren't the de facto standard. Don't think that a multiplier of 10 is required for a 200FSB. This is an area you'll have to experiment with to find the right balance of performance and reliability.

About the FSB argument... we've proven that FSB is more important than gunning for a high clock speed, but like we said, try to find the right mix. Although 15x133 will be about 90MHz faster than 11.5x166, and loses, 15x160 will be faster than 11.5x166.

With the right hardware and cooling, you can easily add 100 to 200MHz to most Athlon XPs, and in some cases, much higher. The only time you're going to hit a bump is if you have the higher clocked CPU. For example, a Barton 3200+ runs at 11x200 (2.2GHz), so since we've already reached the 200 FSB plateau here, you're not going to get as much of a "free" boost as you would from a lower clocked CPU.

Hopefully, some of you have found this guide useful. If you have any questions, we'll be happy to help you out in the forums. Problem with emails, is generally, questions repeat themselves. Posting inquiries will make it easier to help several people at once, and make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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