Barton core cpu has unlockable multiplier???

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shenlingstyle

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I was playing around with my Athlon XP 3200+ last night and I realized I could set the multiplier to whatever I wanted. It's strange because I thought the more recent bartons had locked multipliers. This was a cpu I bought over ebay a while ago.

Anyways I thought it might be just a bug or something but due to curiosity I changed the multiplier to see what happens. It was originally at 11, I managed to change it to 9.5 before I encountered problems. At this time, the multiplier x the fsb speed was actually below the stock speed of the cpu (i.e. it was below 2.2 GHz) so I thought wow this is my opportunity to crank up the fsb speed right. So I cranked it up by 5 MHz, which even then would make the total speed still under 2.2 GHz. After I restarted, it couldn't get past the motherboard logo screen. Sometimes it can't even get past the moniter message that I always used to get before the motherboard logo pops up. Sometimes I hear the POST beep and sometimes I don't. So I had to reset the CMOS and now it's up again.

I guess my question is why the multiplier is unlocked and why I couldn't increase the fsb enough to compensate for the lower multiplier. Plus I didn't even reach the original stock speed yet.
 
Well, you bought it off ebay, so who knows he could have tampered with it somehow. I'm not a real specilist on CPU's but I'm guessing the guy did something to mess it up.
 
The only way I know to unlock the multiplier would be to tamper physically with the cpu, but I found no such traces on the cpu itself.

Why would I lower the multiplier? So that I can increase the fsb greatly. From what I know it is better to have 10 x 220 than to have 11 x 200, even though they both give the same cpu speed. My memory speed also gets raised as the fsb gets raised, so I guess that's also a good thing?
 
Actualy technicaly if you have a 3200+ you shoul dhave the multiplier on 13. My 3000+ has one of 13 as well and 11 is my 2600+ stock. 9 would be my sisters 1800+ so there gives one reason of suspision. The reason your clocks are unstable would probably be becasue of your Asus board. They make poor AMD boards. Also you would only get a minimal speed increase (real world) from raising the ram just a little bit. Your better off raising the multyplier on the cpu to get better cpu speeds. Also be aware that your 3200+ has minimal headroom becasue that was the top speed for the Barton cores.
 
Actualy technicaly if you have a 3200+ you shoul dhave the multiplier on 13.
no because a 3200+ is a 400FSB 2.2GHz CPU.

200 x 11 = 2.2GHz like he pointed out already.

Also be aware that your 3200+ has minimal headroom becasue that was the top speed for the Barton cores.
also not true considering the mobiles are barton cores as well and they can hit quite high...granted his Vcore would be higher, assuming he kept it cool enough it'd hit upwards of 2.5GHz+ as well.

Raising the FSB on the socket A boards requires generally more voltage to the north bridge and better cooling for the north bridge as they tend to get quite hot on the nf2 platforms.

So yes as 10x220 is technically better than 11x200 because of the raised FSB and faster RAM speeds, it'll also be more of a pain in the ass than if you could simply raise your multi while leaving the FSB at 200 and OC'ing the CPU.

AMD64's raising the FSB is no big deal, but with the socket A's theres just the whole making the NB cooler and possibly more voltage to it and the fact that socket A's will max out at around 240 or 250MHz.....250MHz if you're LUCKY , have really good NB cooling and possibly a voltage mod in some cases.
 
200 x 11 = 2.2GHz like he pointed out already.
Just looked and my 3000+ is 400mhz FSB@2.1ghz w/ the multiplier at 13:amazed: So something is goin on there. BTW if the FSB was set at 166 my ram would run at 333 which it dosent, it runs at 400. Explain that one.
 
Er...I thought only the XP 3200+ could run at 200 FSB. Is yours overclocked?

And if you divide 2100 by 13 it comes out to 160 something, so your fsb theoretically should be running at 166...I think...

My other question is about the sequence of doing things when overclocking. All I'm sure about so far is increase fsb as a first priority and then the voltage only when instability occurs. I've been pretty much ignoring my RAM until last night when I increased the voltage to it and achieved a slightly higher overclock. When am I supposed to tighten/loosen the timings (right now it's set on auto so it loosens by itself) or increase voltage to RAM? And how come I only have 3 options for RAM voltage, which are 2.6V, 2.7V, and 2.8V?
 
the explanation would simply be you're reading something wrong, or rather whatever you're looking at is displaying something wrong, or possibly not running what it's displaying and defaulting to a locked multi of 10.5

Do the simple math....200FSB with a multiplier of 13 wouldn't equal 2.1GHz now would it? No, that'd be 2.6GHz which I can 100% guarantee your CPU isn't running at, not stock anyway. 10.5 x 200 = 2.1GHz

Simply put, I don't know if something is simply being displayed wrong, your BIOS is showing 13 but it's obviously not running that or what, but simply put, stock, the multiplyer is not 13.

With my 2400+ XP (not XP-M...the regular XP as I had both) even if I set the multiplier higher or lower it still default to 14 or 15, I forget which was the default, it was a 266FSB CPU.

The 3200+ bartons are 2.2GHz 400FSB CPUs...the only possible combination is 11x200 which is what all XP-M users would put their CPU at because 'hey it's like you got a 3200+'

This is of course referring to when (I personally) was first learning and before we pushed it beyond that
 
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