How's Thornton overclocking... anyone got their hands on one yet?

[mechBgon]

I was perusing the tidbits at The Inquirer here. They have a link to some AMD roadmaps that were rather interesting.

On the practical side, there have been a few reports of the Thornton CPUs popping up, and seeing them listed in the roadmap reminded me about them. These are Bartons with half the L2 cache turned off, so they're sort of like a Thoroughbred but they have the larger physical core size of a Barton. Just curious if the extra surface area helps out with the cooling enough to make them OC extra nice. Anyone happen to have tried one yet? Shimmishim...?

 

[anomaly]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
I was perusing the tidbits at The Inquirer here. They have a link to some AMD roadmaps that were rather interesting.

On the practical side, there have been a few reports of the Thornton CPUs popping up, and seeing them listed in the roadmap reminded me about them. These are Bartons with half the L2 cache turned off, so they're sort of like a Thoroughbred but they have the larger physical core size of a Barton. Just curious if the extra surface area helps out with the cooling enough to make them OC extra nice. Anyone happen to have tried one yet? Shimmishim...?

It would seem to me like the decreased cache is not worth the slight increase in FSB speeds.

 

[beatle]

As the cache really doesn't seem to make a huge difference in most apps, I think the question is whether these chips will reach higher clock speeds.

 

[Shimmishim]

Originally posted by: beatle
As the cache really doesn't seem to make a huge difference in most apps, I think the question is whether these chips will reach higher clock speeds.

i agree...

the extra cache can't make up for 200 mhz difference...

my 1700+ @ 2.5 ghz is still faster than a barton 2500+ @ 2.3 ghz... ran benchies and stuff... 256 L2 makes no difference but it'd be interesting to see if the extra does make a difference though in temps or cooling the chip... hmm...

anyone know where to buy one of these?

 

[BDSM]

The question is ofcourse (as someone already stated): Will the Thorntons reach higher clockspeeds!??

We need a new stepping bad!!.. Remember how big a difference moving from T Bred a to b did! (and that change also heralded a small increase in die area)It's not at all impossible that we could see a new stepping reach several hundred megahertz higher than the best T-bred b's do today. I certainly hope AMD is working on one or that the Thornton is IT!!

Remember how much better the 0.18 micron processors got over the years? They debuted at 800 mhz, right?.. and the final one was 1733 mhz!

So. the potential could be there in the 0.13 micron process if AMD just realizes that Intel has too big an advantage at the moment and that the Athlon64 is too far away... This is what I am hoping anyway... Just imagine a 3 ghz Thornton at 240 mhz fsb.. yummy