Athlon FSB confusion

[GeneNg]

Hi all, I am abit confused abt the different FSB on an Athlon chip.

I know that there are 2 flavours of the Athlons. one with 100FSB and the other with 133FSB. Also from my understanding, its possible to put both types into an ASUS A7V or any other 133A chipset mobo. (Is this correct?)

Now if that is the case, what is the advantage of putting the higher FSB into the mobo? (in relation to overclocking)

How would the 100FSB compare to the 133FSB CPU in terms of overclocking? After all, we would be using the same SDRam (or is the ram actually the reason?)

Also if I wanted to OC the 133FSB CPU, do I also have to unlock it as well? According to Anandtech's article about Overclocking 133A chipsets, they said that the problem exists with 100FSB CPUs, but what about 133FSB CPUs? Or is it still advisable to stick with ASUS and ABIT for jumperless mobos for both multiplier and fsb changing?

Apologies for the long post, but yeah I am very very confused. I have been spending about a month learning as much as possible abt Athlon OC-ing, and collecting alot of data in prepartion for constructing a new machine. *sigh* Anandtech has been a good base line to read reviews etc. And thanks in advance to anyone who enlightens me. Cheers!

 

[ntshane]

133mhz is a faster memory bus than 100mhz. If your cpu can send and recieve info from the memory faster then it can do more work...sortof. 133mhz will not aid you much in oc'ing the cpu itself...but it is typically better to run at the highest memory bus that you can.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

The a7v does not support 133MHz bus speed(it a kt133 board) you would need the a7v133 for this.

 

[GeneNg]

apologies, yes Dark4ng3l is right. actually i was referring to the ASUS A7V133 mobo.

ok so generally its better 2 get the Athlon with the 133FSB flavour if we wanna OC.

But my other question still stands regarding Anandtech's article abt OC-ing on the 133 FSB mobos. From my understanding of that article, it seems that only 100FSB CPUs put into those 133A mobos will have problems trying to overclock becoz the chipset recognises the DEFAULT multipler of the CPU rather than the USER multipler setting when it POSTS. But does that apply to 133FSB CPUs as well?

thanks in advance and thanks for those who have posted 2 this thread. im learning more each day. cheers!

 

[Whitewolf]

Let's start from the beginning.....

Amd produces two kind of Athlon's. One with the FSB100(200 effective) and one with the FSB133(266 effective).

The motherboards with the Via KT133 such as the Asus A7V only support FSB at 100 and thous putting an FSB133 Athlon would result in running it at FSB100. You can also overclock it (if it's Athlon FSB100) or just run it (if it's Athlon FSB133) to FSB110-that's the limit of the KT133 chipset.

From the other hand motherboards with the Via KT133A chipset support "officially" -in KT133 you could run as I said your FSB133 Athlon but with the FSB to 100- both the FSB100 and FSB133 Athlons. So if you have an FSB100 one you can either run it at default or overclock it to the FSB133. Choosing the second may result having problems if you have some kind of mobo's as Anandtech said. But if you have the A7V133 there's no problem, so choose this If you have an Athlon with FSB133 default you have no problem with whatever mobo you choose.

There's no particular reason to choose betwwen those two types of Athlon's. They are practically the same. The only thing that comes into my mind is that you will run within specs if you choose the Athlon FSB133 and run at FSB100. But what the hell.... who cares about specs

Of course to use each type of FSB (1000 or 133) you must have the appropriate ram. I suggest you get some Crucial PC133 CAS2 which is dirt cheap You can also overclock good with it,beyond the 133 (say 155! )

 

[Expandable]

I am confused as well. So
KT133 = 100FSB Can overclock to Max ~ 110FSB
KT133A = 133FSB Can overclock as far as your CPU and Ram can go.

How about DDR Ram, can I use them on these chipsets, Mobos.? If not what Chipsets and Mobos? As DDR Ram cost just a bit more than SDram, I am thinking to get some DDR Ram at Crucial.

Thanks.

 

[GeneNg]

i think the any athlon can be placed into mobos which support DDR ram. the only difference is just that - the DDR ram support.

Don't think theres any other difference aside from that. in light of what i just wrote, i suppose those PC-166 rams i better than the PC-133 rams for overclocking right? (correct me if i am wrong)

But my question still stands - do we still have to go thru all that unlocking business of the multiplier even with the new 133FSB CPUs?