Unlocking P3/PIII

[Guest]

Has anybody ever considered unlocking the P3 (PIII) in a similar fashion the Thunderbird? There are a number of things underneath the chip (resistors and some copper things) that make me wonder. All-in-all the Coppermine FCPGA packages are far cleaner looking than the thunderbirds, so I have doubts, but if anybody has read the white-papers or something...
Good Luck all

Ryan

 

[Guest]

I'm quite sure that someone has attempted, and that many have read the documents from Intel. If a solution to overclock had been found that was any where near a reasonable mod with possible destruction of the CPU it would be done by now. As it stands though, the speed the PIII will reach compared to the Athlon TBirds is so different that everyone would rather buy an Athlon. Plus, the AMD chips costs much less for more performance, so why bother focusing on the PIII any more?

 

[Crashman]

Wrong-I traded UP to a PIII for stability and easy settup! I work at home and the less time I spend fixing my own computer the more time I can spend fixing everyone else's. I don't CARE if I could get 2% more out of a T-BIRD for 10% less money-time IS money!

Suicide is painless...........

 

[Guest]

"the less time I spend fixing my own computer" What is it that you are refering to?? What about AMD needs "fixing"? I think its been established numerous times that You can get significantly more performace (far more then 2%) out of an equally clocked Tbird...at far less cost. I mean if you know of problems with the birds let me know, but as a business choice I dont see buying a slower more expensive chip as a savy thing to do.

 

[silverpig]

What do you mean easy setup? Are you implying that Tbirds are hard to set up?

P3: drop the chip in the socket, apply some thermal grease, put the HS/fan on.

Tbird: drop the chip in the socket, apply some thermal grease, put the HS/fan on.

Everything else should be the same...

Why do I even try?

 

[Crashman]

OMG, Not the whole thing agian. For simple users who don't actually USE there computers, the Athlons are fine. For people who LIKE to spend time setting up their computer and don't MIND that it crashes once in a while, the Athlon is fine. The problem is that no one seems to make a good chipset for ANYTHING AMD. The only choice you get is VIA. I make system changes frequently-VIA chipsets have an IRQ configuration problem. VIA chipsets have an AGP timing problem, that, although it is fixable with drivers, becomes worse when you make other changes to the system because their drivers are not stable. VIA chipsets have all kinds of little quiks that can take minutes to hours to fix, and the more cards and programs you have the worse it becomes, especially when you use fussy cards like certain sound cards (Vortex2 and SBLive come to mind), certain fussy network cards (I have one), certain fussy SCSI cards (aren't most?) etc. etc. and cheap software (how many times has Freeware worked in my intel systems but crashed my AMD systems I can't even count). And it all comes down to crappy chipsets. The best AMD systems I have for reliability are k6-2's on Intel chipsets (using the 2x=6x trick).
As for performance, I have not seen any advantages in my own sytems. It is give and take. Since I am a gamer, I believe 3D-Mark 200 is a perfect test for system performance, but the T-Bird lag behind. Don't believe me?
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1
That sets the example. I compared systems with the same video card at similar clock speeds giving the AMD a little advantage and it still crapped out. I'm sure there are lots of other benchmarks that it excells at, but overall there is very little performance difference. And if you don't believe me on the stability issue, take a look at all the post where people are having problems they need solved. The overwelming majority are AMD systems, but of the Intel systems, most seem to be with VIA equiped Intels. Draw your own conclusions-if I were to bill myself for the time I've spent fixing my own VIA equiped systems it would come out to maybe $300 a month in lost productivity. So I don't blame AMD. I have been recommending MAGiK chipset boards for people who have their hearts set on an Athlon-based system.


Suicide is painless...........

 

[Oni]

did it ever occur to you that on the forumns there are more AMD problems than Pentium problems since most people want to save their money and buy AMD?
Just the fact that more people have AMD processors than Intel should set you off right there. I'm almost 99% sure that if there were more Pentium users there would be more pentium problems.

 

[necroscope]

maybe a little bit but via=cancer and dat's final

Companies that = cancer
ati creative lexmark micro$oft mitsumi rambu$ via

 

[Crashman]

No, what actually occured to me as a system builde with around a thousand systems experience is that systems with VIA chipsets generally tend to take up much more of my time than systems with any other chipsets.

Suicide is painless...........