Which is cooler? 1.4 Tbird or 1.6 XP?

[tallest1]

Heres my situation: I have a 900mhz Tbird which hits a semi-dangerous level of 70% when I'm recording/encoding video. I am also a cheapskate who doesn't want to change his HSF which idles at 37C. I have a mobo that uses SDRAM so I don't want to 'over-upgrade'.

Should I upgrade to a 1.4 Tbird or 1.6 XP (or lower/higher?) to better handle the encoding? and if so, which generates less heat?

All comments appreciated

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[InsaneMorphius]

IMHO, I would go with the fastest XP you could get for what you are doing. BTW the XPs do run cooler than the regular Athy's

 

[gunf1ghter]

If you aren't running into problems with audio or video stuttering it really doesn't matter if your processor utilization is at 70% or not. I wouldn't upgrade based on just the percentage unless you are seeing some kind of real world problem with your current setup.

As far as temperatures go, your current HSF almost certainly won't cut the mustard with the 1.4 Tbird. The 1.4 Tbird uses almost 80 watts of power and is one of the hardest processors to keep cool ... you will never see 37C temps again, that's for sure.

Anyway, don't waste your money upgrading until you actually need to.

 

[tallest1]

thats the prob. Whenever I watch a video in Windows Media player, read my email in outlook, or play a really minor computer game, the CPU maxxes out and the video very noticibly suffers. Thanks for the advice.

 

[tallest1]

at what point is an XP hotter than a Tbird?

 

[gunf1ghter]

the XP2100 is almost as hot as the Tbird 1.4 gig chip.

 

[blackhawk]

I went from a 1.4 to an XP 1800 with same fan and mb and it was about 5c cooler under load.

 

[InsaneMorphius]

"the XP2100 is almost as hot as the Tbird 1.4 gig chip"

So lets see, thats 1.73GHz vs 1.4GHz.... I would say the XPs are cooler

 

[gunf1ghter]

ummm... it's not so simple... the Tbird was built with a different fab than the XP chip... one uses .18 micron fab the other uses .25 micron fab... they also use different core voltage which affects the temperature. The .25 micron 1.40 gig Tbird was one of the hottest chips ever produced by AMD.

 

[Yum]

I read somewhere that the new XPs have actually had heat output reduced by 20% thats more of a generic figure tho, its obviously gonna differ with increasing speed, but still pretty impressive, wish i could afford an XP