The AMD Mobile Barton

You would have thought that socket A would have died away now, wouldn't you? It's certainly not the case just yet, check out the latest cheap and cheerful craze; the mobile barton.



click on the picture to find out what all of the fuss is about!

 

The thing about this is, the more press that processors like these get, the more likely AMD are going to do something about it. Exactly what happened with the rest of the chips. Either that, or they'll ramp the price up something cronic. Its the kind of thing that should get around by word of mouth, not articles.

In saying that, AMD may not care because the A64 is a preferred choice in a lot of cases.

I wonder if an AMD representive would drop by and share AMD's thoughts. I personally like AMD because of the overclocking options. Hell, i find it more entertaining playing with hardware than playing with the actual games most of the time.

 

I'll see what I can do, I work at Best Buy in the states (gonna be the youngest tech soon) and we have an AMD rep that comes by ever so often. Were gonna get AMD 64 3200 + a mobo for like 175 USD

 

yeh its sweet. But the market should be going towards 64bits. If I ever upgraded from my 2800+barton I would for sure go for 64bit.

 

it should be going towards 64-bit, correct. However there are still people out there willing to embarras a few A64 owners with the clocks that these mobile bartons can achieve.

Until Athlon 64 is finalised on socket 939, I still think these are the way to go if you've got an existing socket A system at the moment.

 

Plus when you take into account the price difference, the M-Barton is a very appetising option.

 

more than that IMHO

 

Good artice

I do have a slight problem with the whole issue of the mobile Bartons being touted as the "budget" option for high performance systems however. Sure.. they overclock like a dream and are capable of matching a A64 in terms of performance... but... at a price. First of all, to get that level of performance with any level of reliability, you need something more in the way of cooling than air. It may be OK to benchmark on air, and one Barton in the super-pi thread is doing very nicely on air thank you very much, but I bet it's owner doesn't run it at those insane speeds 24/7. If you want stability, you're looking at a good water setup, or phase cooling if you plan on running it at anything like A64 speeds 24/7.

Watercooling, even the cheap options, cost a couple of hundred quid for something useable in a OC situation (some people so use water for noise reasons only). Phase cooling is even more pricey. So whilst the CPU may be cheap, the other hardware you'll need to reach A64 speeds are not.

Don't get me wrong: I think they're great. I just wonder about the thinking behind people saying things like "You can get a mobile Barton and clock it to A64 speeds for a fraction of the cost". Can you? Can you get it as fast, and as stable for the same money? The A64 3000+ is very cheap now, and it's fast at stock speeds.

Another thing: Overclocking at the levels we're talking about is not easy for everyone. Any n00b glancing through the OClocking forums will soon realise that it takes more than just increasing a value in a BIOS setting. You're talking about voltage mods, very low latency RAM, and system tweaks galore.

I think a more accurate way to describe the Mobile Barton is a chip for enthusiasts, and not a budget performance chip as some are describing it (not Big Z).

One thing no one can argue with is until there's a socket for A64 with a future (investing in current A64 is only viable if you really need a new computer now), the M-Barton certainly bridges the gap between old K7 and new K8 chips, and expensive or not, it's all great fun!

Just an opinion.... nothing against OCing K7s, and I'm certainly not one of the paranoid few who think all this frenzied K7 OCing is somehow holding back 64bit. One point that was made however rings true with me: That AMD will soon either put a stop to this (super-locking), or capitalise on it (price hike)- neither case being good for the OCing community.

 

Water cooling is not that bad an investment, when I upgrade all I will need to get is a new waterblock.
And even at 2.5 or 2.6ghz the processor gives off only about 100watts, which isn't that bad.

 

It's a very good investment - don't misunderstand, but add the cost of it to a M-Barton, and then compare that to a A64 3000+ and it's not as clear cut as you think. Plus.. you can OClock a A64. Not as well as a unlocked barton, sure, but it's so much faster to start with. On a pure bang for buck basis, the M-Barton doesn't seem as cheap as people seem to think it is.

Plus.. how realiable and stable will a M-Barton be at.. say... 2.6GHz? Could it be left running Prime95 for days on end, and run every game you own (or own at ) with no problems? What does it cost to get that level of performance AND stability? Building a system to benchmark... just for the fun of it (nothing wrong with that either) is one thing, but some people want a fast computer that's rock solid... indeed NEED one.

I'd be interested to know the total investment for those peeps currently kicking ass with Bartons in the Super-Pi thread. I bet if they total up the receipts, it comes to more than a 3000+ and K8 Mobo.

You may not have as much fun though... I'll grant you that. I don't want people to think I have a problem with any of this.. I don't. I just question this whole "budget" thing.

 

why run the FSB so high anyway? its diffiult to make a system run stable at that FSB, more or less useless for a performance gaming box, most of your components wont like it.

divide 2700 by 200 and you get a multiplier of 13.5.

BTW, my box is liquid cooled cpu 2600+ 1.8v at 111deg F @ 2300mhz 200 fsb cpu runs stable @ 2472 215 fsb, but i killed one of my drives.

 

Welcome to the forums!

I won't say how stable it was, because there is more to come from that chip no doubt, it's running in the sweet spot there, I would say. High FSB improves performance in games among other things - I find windows that bit more snappy @ 230MHz+ fsb than 200MHz fsb. I've moved back to an NF7-S now, after numerous problems with the Infinity in general.

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On to other comments:

Pookey - I find watercooling a long term investment, once you've got the basic kit, you can just add to it... get a new socket CPU and get a new block (much like when you'd buy a new HSF for a newer socket). Phase change is much the same, you can buy new mounting kits for the prometeia/etc for less than what you'd expect to pay for a top end HSF.

It depends what you're after at the end of the day, and also how much you're wanting to spend. I'll look at this when I get on to the next part of the article - I've got a Swiftech MCX462-V to look at, which should provide some interesting results. I'll be looking at max benchable settings all being well, and also prime stable settings too, as both are important in a sense, certainly the latter, as everyone needs to run stable, right?

 

I know people that are using these chips on air at 2.6ghz. I run my unlocked barton at 2.35 on air day to day, and never have any issues with it. I just built my own watercooling rig for around $60USD and im getting VERY nice temps with it (rivaling very expensive setups), so i wouldnt say its expensive either waiting for my DFI LP-B.

-EVRE- its not useless for gaming, it adds to your bandwidth, which with newer games is a must in some cases. If you have an Nforce2 board then you dont need to worry about it... your hdd died of something else, unless you didnt lock your pci/agp speeds. If you don't have an nforce2 board then you just shouldnt be overclocking like that, no point in saying theres no point in it.

My bilk is, even TODAY in another forum i frequent, an newbie was asking how much a mobile barton was and talking about 'arcticles and reviews he'd seen'. See, this will raise the price. I cant afford a barton mobile yet, and I don't want to have to buy one right this minute just because articles are screaming all over the net about it. I hope like hell AMD doesnt do anything about this, its frustrating because I sure as hell cant stop the reviews, and the people writing them dont seem to realise that they're essientially shortening the life of a great chip.

Amd will do something about it at some stage... they are a business.

Once again, I'd love to see what AMD has to say about this craze. I really hope they don't do the whole superlocking thing again, it just reduces their marketshare more... If they do it again, im going to consider intel.

 

your totaly right about the motherboard, i did a little research, only to find out that i had made a bad choice for mobo. The Nfoce is a great board for overclocking because the cpu and pci/agp bus can run independent from the cpu fsb unlike my board with the kt600 chipset.

yep, the oc that you see the most performance gain is in the fsb.

BTW it wasnt my HDD it killed it was my DVD +/- RW, so i clocked it back down to 2300, i have a speed strip on the way, and hope my chip isnt super locked. I got the cpu last fall. i hope with it i can set the mult to 12X and ~200mhz fsb i should get a solid 2400 or more mhz.

 

I spoke to AMD about the mobiles at CTS, and they seemed glad that they had a budget market too... they didn't seem all that worried (as in "we need to stop this right away!") that I've clocked to 3GHz+ (screenshottable) with a relatively poor stepping, they seemed very interested in what I'd done. I am guessing that their sales are going well with the Athlon 64, well enough not to worry about the die hard Socket A users affecting their sales. Afterall these chips were designed for laptops, so they can't lock down the multiplier on them. IMHO, there will always be ways to get hold of them so long as they are demanded for the laptop industry.

They're going to be phased out eventually, as every product has a lifespan - we cannot stop this unfortunately. With the Athlon 64 notebooks taking off well, I doubt it will be too long before they're going to be hit on the head... maybe a year at most I would say - they will continue to be readily available until the 32-bit 256k L2 cache Socket 754 cpus come along.

 

Well thats good news from our perspective then isnt it superb. So long as i can get one when i want it, and the A64 is overclockable on the new nforce, im as happy as a pig in mud

 

What do you mean by A64 being clockable on the new NForce? It's clockable on any chipset isn't it? It's multiplier locked anyway.

 

I thought the Athlon64 was unlocked.

 

The FX is unlocked. The current boards have no PCI/AGP locks but the newer ones have just come out (and NF3 apparently is happening soon) that allow locking of these. If they're not locked, it limits your overclock quite a bit if you have a 'lucky chip'.

 

FX is unlocked, yes, but those can be unlocked on any chipset currently available. What you're referring to is the PCI/AGP lock on the NF3-250 and KT800 pro chipsets.. but that has nothing to do with the chip itself. You can still overclock a A64 on a KT800 or NF3-150 chipset, you've just got to choose your video card carefully, and use a PCI based hard disk controller. Not as easy I'll admit, but to say you can't clock a A64 is a little misleading. You can overclock the FSB even without these things. I've had mine at 245MHz straight out of the box (highly unstable I'll admit)