ECS mobo specs question?

[RealTime]

Ok I have a question for you brains here. mobo specs here

A friend has a PC that he wants to upgrade. His mobo specs say his CPU max supported is a AMD Athlon XP 3000 with a FSB of 333. He wants to know if it is possible to put the AMD Athlon XP 3200 with FSB of 400? If not, why?
Also, with the AMD Athlon XP 3000 it comes in two FSB flavors, 333 and 400. He seems to think that since they are all Socket A that it will work people overclock way past mobo specs all the time. Personally I think he is just trying to get me to put the 3200 in there cuz he can get one from a friend cheap. Now I looked into getting a 3000 but oddly enough the 3000 with the rare 400 FSB seems to be easier to find then the 333 FSB. lol The only thing easier to find is the 3200. LOL
Now before I get the whole tell him to upgrade to 64 bit, I want you to know that I tried that. He wants to keep this one. When he does move to 64 he wants a whole new tower. Built from the ground up with all new parts.

Thank you for your time and advice.
-RealTime

 

[stevty2889]

The motherboard doesn't support 400mhz FSB, so a 400mhz FSB chip isn't going to work, the bios won't be able to recognize it at all most likely, and even if it does, it won't run it at it's rated speed. I tried putting a 533mhz FSB P4 in a board that supported 400mhz FSB, but could overclock to 533FSB..it it ran for about 2 minutes, then it killed both the motherboard and the power supply.

 

[Matthias99]

I'm gonna chop your post to bits and try to answer it in pieces.

Originally posted by: RealTime
A friend has a PC that he wants to upgrade. His mobo specs say his CPU max supported is a AMD Athlon XP 3000 with a FSB of 333. He wants to know if it is possible to put the AMD Athlon XP 3200 with FSB of 400? If not, why?

Well, on the AthlonXPs, the memory controller is built into the northbridge, and the clock speed is determined by a multiplier off the FSB frequency. If the FSB is running at 166Mhz (DDR333), a chip expecting a 200Mhz (DDR400) FSB will be underclocked.

Now, you can try to run it with the motherboard "overclocked" to DDR400. YMMV, though. But you should be able to put in a 3200+ that expects a 200Mhz bus and use it -- it'll just be underclocked by ~30%. This does assume that the MB knows how to recognize the newer chips, but most of them do (at least with a BIOS update).

Also, with the AMD Athlon XP 3000 it comes in two FSB flavors, 333 and 400. He seems to think that since they are all Socket A that it will work people overclock way past mobo specs all the time. Personally I think he is just trying to get me to put the 3200 in there cuz he can get one from a friend cheap.

There's some truth to this; a lot of the DDR333 CPUs would work fine at DDR400 speeds, at least if the clock multipler was lowered so you weren't overclocking the CPU (just the FSB). Many of them would work even with the OC, as long as you provided adequate cooling.

Now I looked into getting a 3000 but oddly enough the 3000 with the rare 400 FSB seems to be easier to find then the 333 FSB. lol The only thing easier to find is the 3200. LOL

They stopped making the DDR333 models well before they stopped production of the DDR400 ones; they were still making the DDR400 ones until recently under the "Sempron" name. Hence the DDR400 ones are a lot easier to find now.

Now before I get the whole tell him to upgrade to 64 bit, I want you to know that I tried that. He wants to keep this one. When he does move to 64 he wants a whole new tower. Built from the ground up with all new parts.

Thank you for your time and advice.
-RealTime

What CPU is he running now? He may get more benefit out of upgrading something other than the CPU, or just saving his money until he can upgrade the whole system.

 

[RealTime]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
The motherboard doesn't support 400mhz FSB, so a 400mhz FSB chip isn't going to work, the bios won't be able to recognize it at all most likely, and even if it does, it won't run it at it's rated speed. I tried putting a 533mhz FSB P4 in a board that supported 400mhz FSB, but could overclock to 533FSB..it it ran for about 2 minutes, then it killed both the motherboard and the power supply.

Well I did someone digging and I found a 3rd party bios that changes the FSB programming range from 133-200 to 133-233 I am thinking with that bios I might able to use the 3200

 

[RealTime]

He has a AMD Athlon 2000 currently.

 

[RealTime]

Curiously Strong Bump