AMD XP2500+ Barton 'AQXEA'

[DR]

Bottom line - if you're prepared to delve into the art of overclocking, you'll be considerably rewarded with an investment in these £70 wonders.

URL: http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD02MTQ=

[fondie]

is it me or is there a horizontal sizing issue on the 2nd page of that review...

good review though, is good to have some overclocking analysis of chips after they've been out for a while rather than on the first production run.

[Rys]

Yep, the table makes it stick way out to the right. I'll try and fix.

Rys

EDIT: done

[DR]

Well done

[megah0]

squid0x is going to kick himself for selling me one of these for £50. It hits 3200+ and over speeds in my shuttle!

/me goes off to find squid0x to buy more

[acidrainy]

hmmm....... I'm thinking of gettig one of these for a shuttle, my worry though is heat. Do they run much hotter due to the increased core voltage?
Can it cope in a shuttle, day in day out at 3200+...... running say, SETI 24/7

[CrapshoT]

just missed the boat again lol mine is axp2500 Barton AQXDA still hits 3200+ speeds at 1.7v tho at temps of 40C idle 45C full load

[Zak33]

Nice review Tarinder.....love the pauses to get the reader to consider just what all this means.....because sometimes we all take it for granted.

Nice job......and the CPU is nice too

[vortigern_red]

Just got an AQUCA yesterday. Hits 2.3 @ 1.78v with just a Volcano7+ on low speed! Just £70 for a retail one, on offer at Microdirect, cheaper than the OEM and I got a free fan!! LOL

Its rock solid and like the one tested will happily boot at 2.4 but is not 100% stable. Looking around this also seems like a good stepping.

One minor gripe,

Quote
a minimum 166FSB running speed and precious little else, is AMD's answer to Intel's 800MHz P4 onslaught.

I know most of your readers will know that the above is not correct but I see it all the time, Is it not fairer to use either the clock rate or data rate for both chips.

You could just as easily say *the current athlon run a FSB of 400MHZ this is in response to the P4s new 200MHZ bus*

This is just as misleading. But you don't see this in any reviews. Some I've seen in paper reviews even quote "so the P4s bus is 4x faster!" as if they really think the P4 has a FSB of 800MHZ.

[Tarinder]

Welcome to the forums

It's a fair point. That whole paragraph is a slight dig at AMD's naming structure. I had to manually look up each Barton's true clock speed, and I consider myself as being pretty much au fait with most PC technology. I do agree that it should be consistent, though.

[vortigern_red]

I think that AMDs rating scheme is pretty reasonable. The only real gripes I have are that the extra 256k of the bartons is prob only worth approx 200 not 300 points and the 200(400) mhz bus should only be worth perhaps 100 not 200 points, comparing the performance with prior Athlons (not the P4).
So I think all the bartons are out by approx 100 points and the 3200 is out by 200 points.

But the argument that they don't compare to the current P4s with the 200(400) bus is silly, AMD had to pick a CONSTANT when coming up with their naming scheme, they can't change all the ratings on the older chips because Intel now has a faster 2.4 GHZ!

They chose a thunderbird athlon or if you like a "winamette (sp) P4" with a bit of head room.

I don't know where people got the idea that chips with the same clock speed (or in this case rating) perform the same anyway. The old K6-2 500 did not perform like the P3 500 but nobody said it should be called the K6-2 400, similarly the P4 at 1.4 never offered anywhere near the performance of theP3 "tualatin" 512k or the athlon at the same clock speed but nobody though to name it the P4 1.1, did they!

IMHO the AMD ratings are near enough compared to the P4, certainly nearer than the clock speed naming method of old was.

Again IMHO the only reason Intel won't use a performance rating, even though the P4 now competes with AMD, even if it was set up by an independant group is because it would show the celeron for what it is.

[smilincanuck]

HI RYS,,,guys.........interesting that my last 2 major purchases lately I find the DAY after an article on the veryu same thing on HEXUS.....smile

Installed this 2500 last night along with a Thermaltake 11+ cooler and it indeed seems to take a good overclock.I had the chip at 3200 specs an hour after I had it installed but I'm still using pc2100 ram and a single stick also so I wasnt surprised to see it crash once I went into an Online match of RTCW.INteresting to me is that the thing even posted to begin with so with a nice Crucial Dual kit of 3200 /512 meg Ram should make it stable.
This cooler was a pain to install tho on an Asus A7N8x mobo tho because they put the capacitors so so close to the edge of the socket for the cpu.For a moment I didnt think it was going to fit but after a few tries of carefully slipping it in there the heatsink was ON.
I set it back to stock default settings for now but it is nice that it will overclock in the future and stay stable....thanks for the article....gee I wonder what I'm gonna get next here...a review on Crucial ram?....smile!!!!

have a good one fellas....

[Sebastian]

Hi there guys,

I am planning to buy a XP 2500 but I have a few questions, hope you can help me...

Did I get that right that not all 2500s are the same and some can be overclocked better than others?

I wanted to buy 333MHZ DDR-Ram with the barton and not 400MHZ cause I read a-synchron FSB speeds slow down the system. If I plan to overclock my system to 400MHZ FSB I should rather go with the 400MHZ Ram, right?

Can you suggest me a good cpu fan which is quiet, has good cooling and is not to expensive?

Thanks for your help,
Sebastian

[vortigern_red]

Some athlonXP are better than others. However most seem to hit XP2800 speeds with a bit of extra voltage.

Get quality DDR400 and it will still run at 333 with good timings and match almost any FSB overclock you are likley to get. And when you upgrade DDR400 will be more useful if you decide to keep it.

[skirkham]

just bought one of these
hope mine overclocks as well

[Doctor.Bob]

Will all 2500's with this stepping give similar overclocks?