Thursday, August 10, 2006
CPU Conventions
Socket 939
Newcastle: Overclockable as you are almost assured a CG revision/stepping. Oldest of the lot.
Winchester: Generally overclockable. However some manage to run even at 2.6ghz or higher speeds while others may not even be able to reach 2.2ghz. Not a very good chip, but generally does 2.4ghz.
Venice: The most overclockable and popular of 939 series. They should be able to do 2.5ghz-2.6ghz easily and if you are lucky you may get it to 2.7-2.8ghz.
There are other less popular CPU cores as Sledge Hammer, San Deigo and maybe even Manchester. However I don't know as much of these. But I know that Venice and San Deigo are the same core, San Deigo is clocked to 200mhz lower but has an additional 512KB cache, so it might be just as good at overclocking, but I am not sure of that. Sledge Hammers might be the best of the lot, but I am not suer of that either.
Socket 754
Newcastle: Come with 512KB L2 cache
Claw Hammer: Come with 1MB L2 cache
We are not much into 754 socket here.
Keep in mind that most/all AMD 64 CPUs have their multipliers half unlocked. This means that you can reduce the multiplier from 10x to 9x for an example but can't increase it from 10x to 11x unless your CPU doesn't support it. Also, AMD 64 CPUs are always clocked in multiples of 200mhz. This invariably means that if you buy a higher model of the same series, the difference will normally be only in the multiplier which would be increased by 1.
eg: AMD 64 3200 Venice = 200 X 10 = 2000MHz
AMD 64 3500 Venice = 200 X 11 = 2200MHz
However there can be cases where AMD CPUs have increased cache with same mutliplier(meaning same speed), and this too results in a higher model.
Newcastle: Overclockable as you are almost assured a CG revision/stepping. Oldest of the lot.
Winchester: Generally overclockable. However some manage to run even at 2.6ghz or higher speeds while others may not even be able to reach 2.2ghz. Not a very good chip, but generally does 2.4ghz.
Venice: The most overclockable and popular of 939 series. They should be able to do 2.5ghz-2.6ghz easily and if you are lucky you may get it to 2.7-2.8ghz.
There are other less popular CPU cores as Sledge Hammer, San Deigo and maybe even Manchester. However I don't know as much of these. But I know that Venice and San Deigo are the same core, San Deigo is clocked to 200mhz lower but has an additional 512KB cache, so it might be just as good at overclocking, but I am not sure of that. Sledge Hammers might be the best of the lot, but I am not suer of that either.
Socket 754
Newcastle: Come with 512KB L2 cache
Claw Hammer: Come with 1MB L2 cache
We are not much into 754 socket here.
Keep in mind that most/all AMD 64 CPUs have their multipliers half unlocked. This means that you can reduce the multiplier from 10x to 9x for an example but can't increase it from 10x to 11x unless your CPU doesn't support it. Also, AMD 64 CPUs are always clocked in multiples of 200mhz. This invariably means that if you buy a higher model of the same series, the difference will normally be only in the multiplier which would be increased by 1.
eg: AMD 64 3200 Venice = 200 X 10 = 2000MHz
AMD 64 3500 Venice = 200 X 11 = 2200MHz
However there can be cases where AMD CPUs have increased cache with same mutliplier(meaning same speed), and this too results in a higher model.
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