X-bit labs

Your AMD Athlon XP Processor May Really Be Faster Than You Think it Is.

Category: CPU

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/19/2003 | 07:31 PM ]

AMD Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processors are simply made for overclocking and overclockers, as we now understand. Even though the first experiences with such CPUs were not considered as positive, now a lot of these processors may be overclocked pretty easily. As we know, most of the chips come with unlocked multipliers, while others work at lowered core voltage speeds what gives us excellent opportunities to overclock them after increasing Vcore to normal 1.6V and even have no problems with cooling. What we definitely were not aware of  is that at least some lower-end AMD Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processors with B0 core are remarked higher end-processors!

Our friends from a well-known OverClockers.ru web-site have found out that a site with a bloody name Bloodys.com offers its visitors this script for revealing all the information about Athlon XP CPU. Among all the technical data about the microprocessor, the script also tells you if your microprocessor was “downgraded” from a faster chip! Apparently, there are digits in the marking of AMD Athlon XP “Thorougbred” CPUs that describe the speed this particular CPU was designed to work at but was later “downgraded” or maybe even “upgraded” in certain cases. Take a look at the example of how the Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processors are marked:

According to the source, the eights and nineth marks (these should be numbers, as shown below) in the second line of the sticker describes the initial speed the processor was designed for (RFBEXR2280073). If the initial model number is higher than the number you have, it means that your processor has been downgraded.

The owner of the web-site explains that “downgraded” in this case means that the CPU was not able to maintain full stability at the given rating with default voltage, so it was remarked to a lower model number. For example, 1700+ downgraded from 2400+ means that this CPU cannot work at 2400+ with core voltage 1.6V, but it can probably hit this and maybe even higher frequencies with voltage increase.

There are rumors that AMD re-stamped the markings of some high-speed CPUs to fulfill the huge demand for lower-speed ones (mostly 1700+ and 2100+), if this is your case, then the CPU should be able to work stable even at 2400+ with the default voltage. I think it firstly concerns AMD Athlon XP “Thoroughbred” processors with B0 stepping that have much higher overclocking potential compared to A0 chips.

The information is totally unofficial and therefore no one can guarantee that it is fully correct or true. At this point the data was collected by the author of the script as well as our friends over OverClockers.ru. It was revealed that even if the information is misleading, the processors worked fine at the “initial” speed with Vcore increase.