My Athlon Xp seems to be running a multiplier much higher than it should be

toskdc

toskdc

toskdc

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Joined
19 Aug 2010
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6
Greetings

Have emerged from my lurking status because I have a puzzling situation.

Please note I have this PC because I can only work with PCs that are given to me for free. This is why I do not, and cannot, have a high or even mid-spec PC until I win the lottery.

I recently inherited a case including an Epox 8RGA+ motherboard and an Athlon XP 1500+ (or so is detected by motherboard). The case only allows 1 x 80mm fan.

The FSB was at 100 originally and the CPU multiplier is 13x. I have successfully and cautiously raised the FSB to 116, giving it a real speed of 1508mhz. 1800+, nicely done. I did this because I did some research and found that the XP 1500 will run at 1700 with stock cooling no problem.

Atm cpu while stressed is running at 65 deg, case at 35.

However, when I ran cpu-z I read that the cpu is the Palomino core. According to wikipedia 1500+ Palominos run at at an FSB of 133 and a multiplier of 10. I did try lowering my multiplier while overclocking and it appears to be locked at 13x and wont budge.

The only Palomino I can find that runs at 13x is the 2100+. Is the motherboard reporting the processor wrongly? Is the processor actually a 2100+ running at a very low FSB? If thats the case, surely if I were to ramp it up to 133 fsb it would overheat really quite badly since its 65 deg at 1800+

My basic question is am I overclocking a 1500 or underclocking a 2100?
 
paradigm said:
You can only work with computers that are free?

Bizzare!
Click to expand...

Yes. My budget really is that tight. I'm actually in a little financial trouble this month because I spent £5 on a 120mm fan & adaptor for the case :) So you can see my budget is extreme to say the least

Update to the issue: I took the fan off of the heatsink and cleaned the fan & heatsink, and its now running at 55 deg. Slightly more reasonable. However halfway through working on some 3D work in Daz Studio, XP decided to go into standby mode. I let it, and brought it back 10 minutes later. Then I shut down. When I rebooted, XP refused to load, it'd go into safe mode only. Luckily my Ubuntu desktop still runs like a dream :)

This system keeps getting wierder and wierder
 
I sounds to me like you might have a higher spec CPU than you think and that the BIOS has defaulted to a 100MHz FSB. My Athlon XP-M does this in my Abit motherboard. I have to manually input the right FSB which (IIRC) takes it from 1.2GHz to 2.2GHz.
 
Ben Cole said:
I sounds to me like you might have a higher spec CPU than you think and that the BIOS has defaulted to a 100MHz FSB. My Athlon XP-M does this in my Abit motherboard. I have to manually input the right FSB which (IIRC) takes it from 1.2GHz to 2.2GHz.
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I think you're right. I tried it at 133fsb this morning, making it a 2100+, and the temps got to 65 deg. So it seems the original 65 degrees when running at 1800+ was because of dirt and dust in the cpu heatsink & fan. Once I removed that the temps dropped dramatically.

Still may be worth me underclocking this one though because although uit ran Quake 3 faultlessly I had errors running MPrime at 2100, and the motherboard sometimes fails to recognise the ram (not just when overclocking.. every so often it just has a hissy fit)

Anyhow, thanks for your help peoples :) Much appreciated
 
paradigm said:
Where abouts are you in the country? I'm sure I could donate something a little faster than an AXP1500+
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+1 with the help mate.

I have a 478/ Mobo with a coolermaster heatsink+2.66CPU you can have.

Im sure someone will have some ram (thats Free)


If your not comfortable accepting gifts you could do me a swap for the CPU (only) Need some spare Socket A stuff to practice with my new DI pot.
 
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Yeah, I've got a 2.8GHz Northwood based shuttle system (complete) that has been sat doing nothing for the best part of 4 years.

One of these:

258cmfk.jpg


I've also got some s775 stuff lying around (Motherboard/CPU/RAM/OEM HSF).
 
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I had to look up ZZZAC to see why I'm opposite :)

Many thanks for the offers of help, but I'm afraid I'll have to decline. It'd be wasted on me :) I enjoy the tinkering, not the end product.

I do appreciate the offers though. +1 eternal karma apiece :)
 
I had a 1500+ palomino some time ago (2001) before I started playing with the 1700+ thoroughbred B CPU's. From dim and distant memory I think it was possible to unlock the CPU for either higher or lower multipliers or even a specific multi but you could not unlock for the whole range. It may be you have such a modified cpu.

It was not a brilliant overclocker unlike the aforesaid 1700+ Tbred which could get above 2400MHz for the then price of about £45. I bought a couple from OCUK and blew one up with too much voltage.

I think if you are running at above 1800+ with a standard heatsink this is good
 
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