Help me decide: I have two 1.6A's at my house, unopened...

[raddygast]

Long story short, bought one at last week's price, then found one at Future Shop with a different FPO/Batch and newer pack date, bought it with price protection. Both unopened. I can return one of them if it's unopened (the Malay one) and the other within 15 days no matter what. Problem is I don't have the mobo yet. Ideally I'd try to o/c the one from Future Shop because I can always return it with no restock and they're none the wiser, but I can't just buy the mobo to test them in the next 3 days because I don't have RAM yet (ordered it, few days at least). Damn. And I just sold my last stick of PC2100 to make way for the PC3200 I ordered: D'oh!

So what I'm asking is, what do you guys suggest. Both retail boxes, here's the info:


L209B592 pack date 05/06/02 (Malay?)

3209A890 pack date 05/17/02 (Costa Rica?)

I assumed the newer pack date was better, and stuff. But now I that I learned how to read the nums, looks like they're both week 9 procs, just in diff plants.

So, question is, what's the general feeling: Malay or Costa Rica? Maybe the fact that the Costa Rica was packed two weeks later means it was made slightly later in the week, maybe not. Just wondering.

Any suggestions welcome. I am going to check the database of course, but no one has the exact same number as me so far.

I will use an Abit BD7-II raid, with Corsair XMS PC3200 Platinum memory (512MB stick).

 

[Su1c1da1]

if you've read through most of the threads here, most ppl saids that it is all in Luck, but to give my input My 1.6A is Malay, 5/02/02 L209B502. Im able to go at 2.4ghz 150 FSB with my pc2100 ram at default voltage running prime95 torture test all day long with no problem at all. I'm pushing the pc2100 to pc2400, and it can't go more than that, so I have no idea of how much more can mine go with the default voltage.

 

[thawolfman]

You can always give me one

 

[LazyC]

Raddygast... I got my 1.6a at Future Shop ( EXACT same batch as yours... and it is costa rica ). It does 2.32 at default voltage, and 2.4 at 1.55v.

 

[raddygast]

Thanks LazyC. What board you running it on, and with what memory?

I'm thinking if I can get my ram within 3 days and set up a test rig, I'll test the Future Shop one. If it OC's really well I will return the other one since the price from FS will be a few bucks less. But then again I may test both.

If I can't get the RAM soon enough, I'll test both, and return whichever one is worse to FS. Only fear I have is they might put the serial no. (FPO) on the receipt and check the one of the proc I return. In any case if I return the Malay (non FS) one I can always put it in the box that came with the FS one!

The other store I bought it at knows the serial no. so I won't be able to pull a swap on them! Anyway, this is kinda fun, never done anything like this before.

I remember Malays used to OC really well in the Celeron 300A days. But I also remember someone writing somewhere that the northwoods from Costa Rica have been high yield: not too many listed on overclockers.com cpu database though.

Thanks guys for your suggestions, and keep the real-world experiences coming. I love to hear about people getting sweet OC's with default voltage and stock cooling.

 

[LazyC]

The board is an Asus P4B533 ( also from FS... pricematched to get a sweet price ), and I use a 256MB stick of Crucial PC2700.

Just curious... what store did you the 1.6a from? I got mine at the Kennedy store in Toronto. I just want to know if most stores have the same batch.

 

[raddygast]

How did you pricematch a mobo at FutureShop? They don't sell mobos, last time I checked. The only components they sell are external peripherals, optical drives, hard drives, video and audio cards (retail only), networking stuff, and really crappy RAM. I was shocked they sold Intel Retail CPUs. No power supplies, cases, motherboards, etc.

I got it at the Future Shop on Yonge 4 blocks north of Eglinton. A really tiny crappy one (new one going up this summer where the chapters used to be). I'm going to check the Eglinton/Laird one tomorrow, if they have a Malay one I may get all three and return two. This is pretty exciting... in the past there was no way I could test things out first, because of restock fees, (and no-return policies on CPUs), but finally the retail processor is the one to get, not OEM.

 

[Duvie]

my fpo/batch # 3213A016 pack date: 5/16/02 Costa Rica...

It does 2.4ghz with 1.51v
It does 2.66ghz w/ 1.66v
It does 2.73ghz w/ 1.71v]

POsted and ran bm's at 2.88ghz...never would run stable at my available or desired voltages...

 

[LazyC]

The retail stores started to carry mobos last week ( FS.ca had them since june ). They only carry the Asus P4B533 and some MSI board.