What is a "Stepping"?

[BUrassler]

What are steppings and why are they so important?

I have an athlon64 3000+ 2.0GHz socket 754 processor? How do I know what my steeping is and why does it matter? Does it effect the overclock?

 

[Ricemarine]

The stepping is where (not fully sure) and when your processor was made. For example, mine is "0516 EPAW" being the 516th week. They are important in terms of overclocking, for some batches in specific weeks get good overclocks, others are bad. But if you don't overclock to the max, it doesn't really matter.

 

[sonoran]

A stepping is like a "version" of the chip. Not usually that big a deal, although with each stepping you might expect the manufacturer would tweak various circuitry for better performance and/or stability.

 

[5t3v0]

Originally posted by: Ricemarine
The stepping is where (not fully sure) and when your processor was made. For example, mine is "0516 EPAW" being the 516th week. They are important in terms of overclocking, for some batches in specific weeks get good overclocks, others are bad. But if you don't overclock to the max, it doesn't really matter.

Do you not mean the 16th week of 2005?

 

[Ricemarine]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0

Originally posted by: Ricemarine
The stepping is where (not fully sure) and when your processor was made. For example, mine is "0516 EPAW" being the 516th week. They are important in terms of overclocking, for some batches in specific weeks get good overclocks, others are bad. But if you don't overclock to the max, it doesn't really matter.

Do you not mean the 16th week of 2005?

Meh my bad.

 

[CP5670]

I think the five letter code (CABYE, CCBWE, etc.) on the second line is generally called the stepping on most forums, but AMD themselves refer to the revision number (E3, E4, etc.) as the stepping. The other eight characters on the second line indicate the production week and possibly also the day. (0540FPAW means the 40th week of 2005, but I don't know if the four letters mean anything)

 

[5t3v0]

I think you're right cp. The stepping is a number followed by the revision which is a 2 character alphanumeric. You can see thse reported clearly in cpuz. On the cpu itself is a bunch of codes. The 5 character code that people call steppings in these forums is actually a batch code. This is followed by a 4 digit number that represents the year and week of manufacture. After that I dont know either. So, for a particular stepping & revision, they may be several batch codes, which in turn may have several manufacture weeks. My cpu has the following:
Stepping: 1
Revision: E4
Batch: CABNE
Manufactured: 0540 (40th week of 2005)

The stepping & revision show which version of the cpu you have (i.e. which tweaks, bug fixes etc. AMD have made), while the batch code & week show where (guess too) & when it was made. Of course most of this only means anything to AMD. We just see the end results of how they perform in overclocking.