Mobile Barton vs. Thorton on a K75SA

[UNCjigga]

Good afternoon ye hardware gurus--I have a bit of a perplexing question. Right now my main rig is still built around an aged K75SA Pro and an Athlon XP 1700+ running stock (mobo sucks for overclocking.) I've been thinking about upgrading my cpu to get a boost in speed, but my options are limited because of 266fsb and pc2100 memory.

I was about to buy a Thorton-core cpu, the Athlon XP 2400+, and just slap that into my rig. But now I've noticed that I can order a Barton core CPU at 266fsb courtesy of the Mobile Athlon XP 2400+. The advantage of this chip is that its a full Barton core with 512k of cache. Also, it runs at a lower stock voltage and comes unlocked (which will come in handy if I ever upgrade to an nforce2 down the road.)

The problem is I don't know if this mobile chip is compatible with my motherboard because of the lower voltage. The BIOS doesn't allow for voltage tweaks, so it has to recognize the chip in order to switch to the correct voltage. The latest BIOS update probably won't have support for mobile Bartons (hell I don't even know if a Thorton's supported!) Where can I find this info?? I haven't seen any discussion of this over at ocworkbench and I don't know of any other K7S5a resources...but I figured a bunch of folks on this forum still have one somewhere!

 

[Cheetah8799]

I don't know if the voltage will be your problem. I've read that some mobos just don't work with these chips. period. I have a Biostar M7NCG 400, it works fine on mine. If you're willing to spend the money on the cpu, why not a cheaper nForce2 board like what I have? Newegg has been floating the price between $62 and $68 with free shipping for a while now.

Also, as I am finding out, overclocking with the M7NCG 400 mobo is a little weird. It is detecting my PC2700 ram as PC3200 sometimes, which obviously isn't right, and then it won't boot.. You may also have problems if you use onboard video on a nForce2 board, it's very flaky on mine, but I have a Radeon 9800, so no worries for me.

Anyway, I'm not saying your mobo won't work. I don't know for sure... If you do upgrade though, you may want to do some research first. Try nforcershq.com forum, lots of info in there about nForce2 mobos.