Question on mobile Bartons paired with older motherboards?

[dderidex]

Here is a question for you....

I was looking at doing an upgrade of some of the PCs back at the office that are using KT266a motherboards.

Believe it or not, they still have their clock multipliers set by jumper.

Anyway, the processor I was looking at was the Barton '3000+' mobile chip - 266fsb with a 16.5x multiplier.

However, the highest multiplier the motherboard jumpers support is ">=12.5x". Errr....greater than or equal to 12.5x? Well, yeah, that's TRUE, it IS greater than or equal to 12.5x....but will it actually understand 16.5x? Or, just run at 12.5x?

(Note that, if left to "auto detect", AthlonXP-Ms run at just a 6x multiplier. So the question is simply - what is the nature of the 'unlocked' status on them? Does it tell the motherboard in any way to use 16.5x? Surely, it must, or how would the motherboard know the difference between an AXP-M '2200+' and an AXP-M '3000+'?)

 

[Fern]

So the question is simply - what is the nature of the 'unlocked' status on them? Does it tell the motherboard in any way to use 16.5x? Surely, it must, or how would the motherboard know the difference between an AXP-M '2200+' and an AXP-M '3000+'?)

Yes, the mobile chips have encoding that tells the mobo what frequency and multi to use. However, as the chips were designed for laptops, desktop mobo's will not usually read them. Because the mobile chips have become so popular, there are desktop BIOS "upgrades" which allow some of the newer mobo's to properly recognize the mobile chips. Don't know if any such modded or updated BIOS exist for your older mobo. Don't think it really matters as lon as your mobo offers adj for FSB and multi. However, appears to me that you do not have sufficient multi adj available to use the mobile 3000+

I suspect that your mobo would just use 12.5 if the option you mention is selected-just a guess though.

 

[LoneWolf15]

Fern, no offense, though this isn't quite correct. In the case of the Athlon XP-M, it is really just an Athlon XP (Barton core) that passed stock speeds at lower voltages than the standard Barton. The multipliers have been left unlocked, and the default FSB set to 133MHz. If your system board supports the XP Barton, it should support the XP-M

Whether the CPU will run does depend a little on the age of you board, but for perspective, I'm running an XP-M 2500+ on a family member's system with an MSI KT4VL (KT400 chipset) at 2.3GHz (14x166) very well. Limitations of older boards though may include a maximum FSB or multiplier the board supports, so consider this carefully. XP-Mobile chips will run at a FSB as high as 200 quite well (the same chip previously ran at 2.3GHz 200FSB on my own system). Your KT266A chipsets will be a very limiting factor though, I'd want at least a KT333 unless your systems will allow you to push the FSB to 166 and appropriately clock-divide in order to allow 33/66 PCI/AGP speeds.

 

[TStep]

I have not tried CPUMSR due to the program not working w/ the nforce2 chipset based boards I've owned in the past, but I think this would be of help to you w/ the KT266. It says you should be able to access all the multipliers available (up to 24x, I believe), thus keeping your fsb/agp/pci ratios in a a stable speed.

If you do try it, please post as I am interested in the results.

Edit: spelling of course
KT266 compatible

 

[dderidex]

Originally posted by: LoneWolf15
Fern, no offense, though this isn't quite correct. In the case of the Athlon XP-M, it is really just an Athlon XP (Barton core) that passed stock speeds at lower voltages than the standard Barton. The multipliers have been left unlocked, and the default FSB set to 133MHz. If your system board supports the XP Barton, it should support the XP-M

Whether the CPU will run does depend a little on the age of you board, but for perspective, I'm running an XP-M 2500+ on a family member's system with an MSI KT4VL (KT400 chipset) at 2.3GHz (14x166) very well. Limitations of older boards though may include a maximum FSB or multiplier the board supports, so consider this carefully. XP-Mobile chips will run at a FSB as high as 200 quite well (the same chip previously ran at 2.3GHz 200FSB on my own system). Your KT266A chipsets will be a very limiting factor though, I'd want at least a KT333 unless your systems will allow you to push the FSB to 166 and appropriately clock-divide in order to allow 33/66 PCI/AGP speeds.

I'm not 100% sure that's true, though.

I've been chatting with a guy on the Futuremark forums, and he has confirmed my own experience - see the system in my sig using an AthlonXP-M. If you do not *specify* the clock multiplier to use, the AthlonXP-Ms use '6x'. If I clear CMOS on my motherboard, the next reboot is at 600mhz - 6x multiplier with 100mhz FSB.

As to the FSB...well, I'm not sure what you are talking about? All AthlonXP-Ms are 266FSB. And while overclocking the FSB is great and all, I can't really do it much, as these motherboards are tapped out at 266FSB.

 

[LoneWolf15]

Originally posted by: dderidex

Originally posted by: LoneWolf15
Fern, no offense, though this isn't quite correct. In the case of the Athlon XP-M, it is really just an Athlon XP (Barton core) that passed stock speeds at lower voltages than the standard Barton. The multipliers have been left unlocked, and the default FSB set to 133MHz. If your system board supports the XP Barton, it should support the XP-M

Whether the CPU will run does depend a little on the age of you board, but for perspective, I'm running an XP-M 2500+ on a family member's system with an MSI KT4VL (KT400 chipset) at 2.3GHz (14x166) very well. Limitations of older boards though may include a maximum FSB or multiplier the board supports, so consider this carefully. XP-Mobile chips will run at a FSB as high as 200 quite well (the same chip previously ran at 2.3GHz 200FSB on my own system). Your KT266A chipsets will be a very limiting factor though, I'd want at least a KT333 unless your systems will allow you to push the FSB to 166 and appropriately clock-divide in order to allow 33/66 PCI/AGP speeds.

I'm not 100% sure that's true, though.

I've been chatting with a guy on the Futuremark forums, and he has confirmed my own experience - see the system in my sig using an AthlonXP-M. If you do not *specify* the clock multiplier to use, the AthlonXP-Ms use '6x'. If I clear CMOS on my motherboard, the next reboot is at 600mhz - 6x multiplier with 100mhz FSB.

As to the FSB...well, I'm not sure what you are talking about? All AthlonXP-Ms are 266FSB. And while overclocking the FSB is great and all, I can't really do it much, as these motherboards are tapped out at 266FSB.

266 is the DDR speed (effectively double the front-side bus speed), 133 is the Front Side Bus speed. As for the clock multiplier, that doesn't mean the board doesn't support the CPU, if the board boots, it supports it. It just may or may not support the speed settings you want. The reason you need to specify a clock multiplier on some boards is because the Athlon XP-M processor is unlocked so that if you have a mainboard that supports AMD's PowerNow! technology (like most notebook mainboards) it can dynamically adjust the clock speed on-the-fly by manipulating the multiplier when CPU usage is low to save battery life.

For more information, check out this article:

http://techreport.com/reviews/...xp-m-2500/index.x?pg=1

 

[dderidex]

Originally posted by: LoneWolf15
For more information, check out this article:

http://techreport.com/reviews/...xp-m-2500/index.x?pg=1

Totally off-topic, but *ouch*, that's sure an article to make my system feel inadequate!

 

[Fern]

Fern, no offense, though this isn't quite correct. In the case of the Athlon XP-M, it is really just an Athlon XP (Barton core) that passed stock speeds at lower voltages than the standard Barton. The multipliers have been left unlocked, and the default FSB set to 133MHz. If your system board supports the XP Barton, it should support the XP-M

I'm not sure what you are politely disagreeing with me about. I am aware that the mobile and the desktop are the same chip but for the hand selection, the multi's etc.

If your are saying that I'm wrong with regard to a desktop mobo not "recognizing" the mobile and using the correct FSB, multiplier and vcore, well we'll have to agree to disagree. For example, my NF7-S does recognize the desktop Barton and will apply the correct FSB, multi and vcore. However, it does NOT recognize my mobile and defaults to FSB of 100, multi of 6 (making a 600mhz cpu) and sets the vcore at 1.65v instead of 1.45v. Likewise with my Shuttle an35n-Ultra.

However, the modding community has offered modified BIOS for these mobo's which allow them to properly recognize the mobile chip.

If my above remarks were interpreted to mean that a mobile will not run in desktop mobo, well I'm not saying that and you can see from my sig that I do have a mobile in my desktop mobo.

Basically, I'm saying if you use a mobile, you're prolly gonna have to set it up manually (select FSB, multi and vcore) cuz ,in general, the desktop mobo's can't detect the proper settings required for a mobile and will therefore default it to a 600mhz chip.

Fern

 

[Fern]

The reason you need to specify a clock multiplier on some boards is because the Athlon XP-M processor is unlocked so that if you have a mainboard that supports AMD's PowerNow! technology (like most notebook mainboards) it can dynamically adjust the clock speed on-the-fly by manipulating the multiplier when CPU usage is low to save battery life.

The reason you need to specify a clock multiplier is because the desktop mobo can't "read" (dang, can't remember the term, it's like "SPD" for ram) the data encoded on the mobile chip.

nForce mobo's do not have AMD PowerNow! Technology.

 

[LoneWolf15]

Originally posted by: Fern

The reason you need to specify a clock multiplier on some boards is because the Athlon XP-M processor is unlocked so that if you have a mainboard that supports AMD's PowerNow! technology (like most notebook mainboards) it can dynamically adjust the clock speed on-the-fly by manipulating the multiplier when CPU usage is low to save battery life.

The reason you need to specify a clock multiplier is because the desktop mobo can't "read" (dang, can't remember the term, it's like "SPD" for ram) the data encoded on the mobile chip.

nForce mobo's do not have AMD PowerNow! Technology.

(side note: Dangit! I keep getting edits because somehow the system hits "Post" automatically right after I hit Reply").

I agree, nForce2 mainboards don't have PowerNow. I was talking about why the multiplier was unlocked on the Athlon XP-M.

I think I just didn't understand your definition of "recognize"; I took it to mean incompatibility, and didn't want others to do the same. You meant it as "Doesn't identify the CPU type", which is true. My MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR didn't recognize the Athlon XP-M cpu type either, though it ran it perfectly well. And you're also right on why a mainboard could default to lower than stock settings because of an inability to correctly recognize the CPU type.

 

[Fern]

OK, I understand.

Thanks

Fern