• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Best Overclocker: AMD or Intel?

R

Revo

Member
I was wondering, on average which make of processor overclocks better, Intel or AMD? Moreover, which produces the least amount of heat, as this is the main factor in overclocking?
 
the heat produced by the P4 and current Athlons are roughly in the same ballpark
the yeilds and chip designs themselves are what determines their overclockability more


right now as the P4 2.4 and 2.6 are easily hitting well over 3 ghz i would give them the nod over the athlon (barton/t-bred)

i havn't seen anyone oc the athlon64/opteron yet but i'm willing to bet we'll start seeing some good overclocking results early next year from those suckers

but if you wanted to build a cheap system that oc's roughly as good as the P4 systems out there you could pick up an nforce2 motherboard and a 2500+ and most likely get to 3200+ speeds and save yourself a few bucks, which isn't bad
 
in terms of highest raw speed it would be the p4's hands down (on air 3.4-36 ghz)

but in terms of percentage of overclock relative to stock speed, it would have to be the amd 1700+ (stock speed of 1.47 mhz and can hit upwards to 2.4 to 2.5 ghz)
 
When overclocking say an AMD 2500+ with a FSB of 333MHz to an internal clock frequecy equal to that of the 3200+ would the performance be the same even though the 3200+ has a FSB of 400MHz?
 
Originally posted by: Revo
When overclocking say an AMD 2500+ with a FSB of 333MHz to an internal clock frequecy equal to that of the 3200+ would the performance be the same even though the 3200+ has a FSB of 400MHz?
Click to expand...

No, which is why on that 2500+ you also increase the FSB to 400 (which is done with one small change in the BIOS - piece of cake). So the end result is yes, it performs exactly the same as a 3200+.
 
Originally posted by: Shimmishim
in terms of highest raw speed it would be the p4's hands down (on air 3.4-36 ghz)

but in terms of percentage of overclock relative to stock speed, it would have to be the amd 1700+ (stock speed of 1.47 mhz and can hit upwards to 2.4 to 2.5 ghz)
Click to expand...

Exactly.

If you want the highest % overclock in MHz, that would be the 1700+. If you want the highest total MHz, that would be a P4.

If you want the best price/peformance that would be IMO a 1700+ or a Barton 2500+.

If you want the best performing (ie overall fastest) overclocking CPU that would be a P4 "C" chip on an Intel 875P chipset motherboard.
 
Jiffy you mentioned that altering the FSB of the 2500+ to 400MHz in the BIOS would result in a 400MHz bus speed for the 2500+ but, isn't the bus on the chip physicaly limited? When you alter the FSB in the BIOS aren't you merely fudging the system to obtain a higher clock?
 
What do you mean fudging the system? If you up the fsb of a barton 2500+ to 200mhz from 166 and lower the multiplyer to 11x then the chip basically becomes the 3200+. There is no fudging of the system there.
 
Originally posted by: Revo
Jiffy you mentioned that altering the FSB of the 2500+ to 400MHz in the BIOS would result in a 400MHz bus speed for the 2500+ but, isn't the bus on the chip physicaly limited? When you alter the FSB in the BIOS aren't you merely fudging the system to obtain a higher clock?
Click to expand...

No, the FSB is not locked. You can set it to whatever you want. Nothing is locked on the Athlon chips and you don't "fudge" up anything. If you can get 2.2 Ghz out of your 2500+ (which is pretty common) then you have a 3200+ for all intents and purposes.

Only the P4 chips are locked, and that's the multiplier. Ie a P4 2.6C has a 13X multiplier permantly locked.
 
That's another advantage of overclocking an Athlon is that you have access to the multiplier settings and do not neccessarily have to solely up your FSB, which might potentially put more strain on your board, to overclock it. Also, the price/performance ratio of an overclocked 1700+ is a pretty amazing even compared to the better O/C'able P4 chips. It's hard to beat a $45 CPU, and more importantly if you're a bit new to overclocking, and you fry it, you're only out $45.
 
Barton 2500+w/Nforce 2 is awesome ... just picked one up for a second machine of mine, and I'm currently running it at ~2.2ghz+ (3200+ speed) at default voltage running very happily with the stock AMD cooler. Havn't tried to push it any higher; but I'm sure I could get atleast 2.3 - 2.4ghz out of it with a voltage bump and a better cooler.
 
Originally posted by: aka1nas
That's another advantage of overclocking an Athlon is that you have access to the multiplier settings and do not neccessarily have to solely up your FSB, which might potentially put more strain on your board, to overclock it. Also, the price/performance ratio of an overclocked 1700+ is a pretty amazing even compared to the better O/C'able P4 chips. It's hard to beat a $45 CPU, and more importantly if you're a bit new to overclocking, and you fry it, you're only out $45.
Click to expand...

that is very true...

but how many people have you heard of lately burn out a p4 chip???

i haven't heard of too many except for those running p4's at 4+ ghz with 1.7+ volts

 
I'd counter by saying that you prob won't push a chip that costs that much as far for fear of frying it. I'd know I'd be squeamish as I've never spent that much on a CPU.😀
 
What do you mean fudging the system? If you up the fsb of a barton 2500+ to 200mhz from 166 and lower the multiplyer to 11x then the chip basically becomes the 3200+. There is no fudging of the system there.
Click to expand...

I thought the bandwidth of a FSB was physically limited. For example, if I incresed the FSB of an Athlon 2700+ to say 800MHz (speaking hypothetically) would that mean the CPU is utilising a frequency of 800MHz for its FSB? If it is then why are the likes of Intel manufacturing CPU's in with FSB's in the ranges of 400MHZ, 533MHz and 800MHz when all you have to do is set the FSB to whatever you like in the BIOS?
 
Originally posted by: Shimmishim
Originally posted by: aka1nas
That's another advantage of overclocking an Athlon is that you have access to the multiplier settings and do not neccessarily have to solely up your FSB, which might potentially put more strain on your board, to overclock it. Also, the price/performance ratio of an overclocked 1700+ is a pretty amazing even compared to the better O/C'able P4 chips. It's hard to beat a $45 CPU, and more importantly if you're a bit new to overclocking, and you fry it, you're only out $45.
Click to expand...

that is very true...

but how many people have you heard of lately burn out a p4 chip???

i haven't heard of too many except for those running p4's at 4+ ghz with 1.7+ volts
Click to expand...

They have thermal throttling so if it gets too hot... the CPU clocks itself down... so theoretically the CPU should not burn itself out other than through electron migration.

P4's generally overclock higher, but you have to keep in mind you gotta put down more cash for a good overclocker vs. a Barton 2500+ or a Athlon XP 1700+. Personally I went with AMD, cuz Im' poor and the respective P4 would be $100 CDN more, and the motherbaord was another $100 CDN. My nForce 2 and my CPU cost me $200 CDN all together, which aint bad.
 
well... let's think about this a little more carefully..

i used to be the same way.. thinking that amd was SOOO much cheaper than p4's...

if you go with the abit is7 and a 2.4C or 2.6C that'll run you a nice ~$270

let's say you go with the 2500+ and epox 8rda+ which will run you about ~$170

so yeah.. you do have about $100 difference...

but also remember that in order to keep decent temps with a barton, you'll most likely need an aftermarket hsf while with the p4's you can overclock nicely with the stock cooler...

so throw in a nice $20-30 cooler and the price difference is now about $70 bucks.


so is $70 bucks THAT big of a difference when considering that if you build a brand new system, you'll end up spending more money for a video card, ram, etc.?

i guess some would say you could spend that extra $70 and upgrade your video card.. which you could...

at least IMHO, the extra $70 bucks or so was worth it for me.

and another nice thing is that i can run a higher fsb than any nforce2 board which means i'll get the advantage of extra bandwidth.


as i said, this is just my opinion and am in no way trying to start another AMD vs. Intel flamewar. i've been an avid amd overclocker until june of this year!!! if people remember, i went through tbred 1700+'s like there was no tomorrow (about 13 in total) 🙂
 
Also not trying to start a flame war, Shimmishim, but the other side to that is that you simply don't need as much FSB on a K7 architecture CPU as you do on a P4. The athlons don't benefit anywhere near as much as the P4s do from increased bandwith and after a certain point you get diminishing returns. The plus side to the intel's is that FSB overclocking really does help their performance greatly so you are probably getting a close to linear performance increase as you increase clock. At least from the first benchmarks I saw of them, the 400Mhz FSB Bartons didn't really get a huge performance jump over similarly rated 333Mhz chips, though that may have changed now with better chipsets and DDR modules.
 
Originally posted by: aka1nas
Also not trying to start a flame war, Shimmishim, but the other side to that is that you simply don't need as much FSB on a K7 architecture CPU as you do on a P4. The athlons don't benefit anywhere near as much as the P4s do from increased bandwith and after a certain point you get diminishing returns. The plus side to the intel's is that FSB overclocking really does help their performance greatly so you are probably getting a close to linear performance increase as you increase clock. At least from the first benchmarks I saw of them, the 400Mhz FSB Bartons didn't really get a huge performance jump over similarly rated 333Mhz chips, though that may have changed now with better chipsets and DDR modules.
Click to expand...

yeah i agree with you about the bandwidth comment that you make. 🙂

but it's just nice to tell people you're running a fsb of 270 rather than 225 🙂
 
Shimmishim - I don't know about you but many P4 users are on aftermarket HSF's. Are you using retail cooling?

Either way you got a freak of nature chip - 2.4 > 3.5 GHz (with Prime stability if indeed it is) is not natural, especially with any kind of air cooling.

Also, P4's are more expensive than just the price difference of the CPU and board.

For most new P4 setups, you need to have 2 sticks of DDR memory, preferably very high quality/high speed stuff. Many P4 users are buying PC3700 and up, which is very expensive. On the Athlon the most you'd need is ~PC3500.
 
well....

i'm not even running an aftermarket heatsink...

when i had my amd, i switched over to a water setup. so i kept the water setup and bought a p4 converter kit so i could use my waterblock.

yes, i am using pc3700 because of the high fsb achieved by my chip... but had it not reached this high, i would have stuck with pc3200 or pc3500...

a freak of a chip?! 🙂

i think there are a hand full of people running 3.5 even with air...

and yes, my 3.5 ghz is 2x prime95 stable for 9+ hours and memtested 🙂
 
Along with the lack of need for ultra high FSB, that also means you don't need as expensive RAM also. Heck I just now upgraded my AMD 761/PC2100 setup cuz the performance difference from the faster RAM and chipset wasn't worth it before the latest athlons came out.
 
A handful of people is right - that's about it! I don't think there's anyone else here @ AT with a 2.4 @ 3.5 or higher on air. I can't think of anyone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top