4400+ & general query about "steppings"

[Barkotron]

Hi folks,

Long time lurker, first time poster

I recently (yesterday) took delivery of a luvverly luvverly new Athlon 64 X2 4400+, and very nice it is too (especially as a step up from an XP 2800+ ), even if I do seem to have got a duff fan on the heatsink (the noise, the noise...).

I was checking out the stepping on t'interweb, to see if I was going to be able to get any extra out of it. It's CCBWE 0547TPMW - but from a quick bit of Googling, this appears to be an Opteron 165 stepping.

The question is - is this normal? All I can think is that either a) two different chips have the same stepping or b) this was originally intended as an Opteron 165 but was binned as able to run 400MHz faster.

Do either of these things happen? Do various different chip models routinely have different stepping numbers?

If it's a binned Opty 165, does this mean that 2.2GHz is getting as fast as it will reasonably go, and I'm just out of luck trying to push any more out of it? I'm not looking for much - pushing it to 2.4 would be ideal.

Cheers for any answers...

[kempez]

Yep you can have different chip with same stepping. Opty's are generally hand-picked silicon. Hopefully yours will be a good clocker

I spect you'll be able to push it quite a bit higher, but maybe not as high as an opty

[Barkotron]

Excellent, thanks

Seems a bit weird somehow, but I'm not going to complain.

As I said, I'm not going to go mental and try to hit 3GHz by pointing a desk fan at the bare heatspreader or anything, a gentle 200MHz o/c will do me fine (it means I've "saved" nearly £120 ), so hopefully that should be good news.

Time to roll the sleeves up then

[fat jez]

Yeah, mine as the same steppings as some really nice Opterons, although I haven't had the time to try and overclock it yet.

Cheers,
Stephen

[kempez]

Yeah 200MHz should be achieved on stock volts mate

[just_laze]

2.6GHz shouldn't be too much of a struggle with a little extra juice.

[Barkotron]

Yeah 200MHz should be achieved on stock volts mate

How right you were

Dropped the multi to 10, FSB at 240 (my RAM is Value Select PC3200, so I'm not holding out great hopes for a massive clock on it - so I'm doing the thing where you run DDR333 speeds at 240 so it's running at 200 ), 1.35V, and it's dual Prime95 (small FFT) stable overnight, at 50 degrees using an Akasa Evo 33 with the fan at the lowest speed.

Not silent, but quiet enough to barely be heard inside my case (P180). I'm wondering if it'd be worth splashing on a Scythe Ninja or something - I presume that'd lower temps a bit, give me a bit more headroom for the push to 2.6. Rolling up the sleeves time, methinks

[kempez]

Good man. The newer chips are VERY easy to get mild OC's on. A bit more takes more work but take it from me its worth it