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AMD Duron Applebred vs. Athlon XP Thoroughbred

CPU by piotke @ 2003-10-07

Recently AMD introduced its new durons. I bought one of them, the 1.6 ghz version. The most interesting part of this cpu is its core voltage, only 1.5 V.
This cpu begged to be compared with an Athlon XP, dlt3c (known for reaching speeds up to 2700Mhz!). Is the new Duron an equally good overclocker ? Maybe even better ? Find out in this review.

Overclocking

The real reason I bought this cpu for !

As you already have read in this review, both the duron 1.6 and Athlon XP have a stock core voltage of only 1.5v.
I overclocked the CPU's using 2 different methods.

The first way: Stock vcore voltage

I left the CPU working at stock voltage, and started raising the FSB. To test stability I used 3D mark 2001 and SuperPi together. The duron topped out, somewhere between 1850 and 1900 Mhz. This difference in Mhz, is because of the temperature. We had some warm days last month, so CPU temperatures got a little bit high. But generally 1850 Mhz was stable no matter what temperature.
I was able to boot and run superpi at a frequency of 1920 Mhz, but 3D mark wasn't stable anymore.

The Athlon XP on the other hand made it to 2050Mhz. And no matter what temperature, to 2000Mhz.
A difference of 150 Mhz !
Superpi worked stable on 2080 Mhz. Not bad :)

And a graph to make it more clearly:

Madshrimps (c)

The Second way: What about higher vcore voltages ?

I just put the Vcore to 1.85v and started raising the FSB and multiplier again. This time the duron made it to 2.2 Ghz. And with only SuperPi I got it to 2250 Mhz.

The XP made it to 2400 Mhz fully stable ! And was capable of running superpi at an amazing 2.5 ghz !

Don't forget, I only used air-cooling, putting both CPU's in a Prometeia/nVentiv system will give you much higher overclocking results.

Madshrimps (c)

Upping the voltage one more time?

I got the duron over 2.3 Ghz, by pushing the Vcore to 1.95v. But, raising the Vcore with the XP gave me no gain. So the duron still has some potential, the XP was topped out using air cooling.

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