Questions about a strange P4 1.6 setup...

[Abhi]

Hello

This are specs i got from running CpuZ on a friends computer...

Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.60GHz Northwood
Family / Model / Stepping F 2 4
Extended Family / Model 0 0
Brand ID 9
Package mPGA-478
Core Stepping B0
Technology 0.13 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, SSE, SSE2
CPU Clock Speed 1632.3 MHz
Clock multiplier x 16.0
Front Side Bus Frequency 102.0 MHz
Bus Speed 408.1 MHz
L1 Data Cache 8 KBytes, 4-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Trace Cache 12 Kµops, 8-way set associative
L2 Cache 512 KBytes, 8-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 1632.3 MHz (Full)

I was under the impression that old P4's had 256 kb on L2 cache...

 

[Abhi]

Also ... it has a Gigabyte motherboard. Is this a good brand? Model 8LS533, 1.x, Intel Chipset i845GE rev. B1.

The ram is SDRAM PC133!

How overclockable is this system, if at all, running stock cooling?

 

[Zap]

Yup, the famous P4 1.6A. Note the "A." There also was a 1.8A and 2.0A. Those did overlap the Willamette core in speeds, though the Willamette also was available in 1.7 and 1.9 versions. In fact, I have a 1.6A at my house right now, overclocked to around 2.16 or so. Those and the 1.8A were the first P4 CPUs to be widely and wildly overclocked.

That CPU should be easy to overclock... depending on your motherboard. Your motherboard would either have to officially support 533MHz FSB or have an AGP/PCI lock. Being that it is an 845GE chipset it does have the higher bus speed support. Next step is to see if you can manually change the board to that speed either through a jumper or BIOS.

 

[Abhi]

So the northwood is good right? And the 512 kb l2 cache is normal?

Also... isnt the fact that it has SDram strange? Will it hamper OCing?

 

[jjmIII]

The Northwood core is one of Intels best. The "a" model cpu has 512 of L2 cache, and the non-a's had 256.

SDram does suck when paired with P4's, but yours will work fine at 133 bus and your cpu is at 100 bus by default.
You need to clock your cpu to a 133 bus to match your ram. People often refer to this as running 1:1 ratio.

The 1.6a runs at 16x100 by default. Ocing to 133 will give you a cpu speed of 2128mhz (16x133). Give it a try .