What type of CPU do I have?

DriveEuro

So, I bought a custom built PC about a year ago from a friend's father who does this on the side. He told me that I was getting a 1.3 ghz Athlon. Well, WCPUID says that the processor is an Athlon Model 4, Socket A (PGA462 Socket). Any EA games that I run the EAsy Info says that the CPU is a Thunderbird. I have had other proggies tell me that the CPU was a Thunderbird. ASUS Probe says the CPU is an Athlon with a max speed of 1200 mhz (I'm overclocked to 1400 mhz). I am running an ASUS A7V-133 mobo. What is the actual CPU speed and what type of CPU? Can anyone help me finding out without having to rip off my heatsink and all that? Thanks in advance.

Nuke209

Well, basically you've described your own CPU yourself, lol
But you have an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.3ghz OC'ed (overclocked) at 1.4ghz on a Socket A
That's what you have then
Ripping off your heatsink will show you your STEPPING CODES
AMD have STEPPING CODES (Like the models) and the newer the code, the more stable it is to OC it. Anything else?
Run WCPUID and see what speed it says in it, and that's the actual speed
Asus Probe isn't always right...

DriveEuro

But Athlon or Thunderbird? I was once told that the Thunderbirds were Althon CPUs that were just named Thunderbird once they crossed a certain mhz threshold. I was also told that anything below that mhz level was a Duron... AHHHHHH.

skastel

ok now, that was a lie. Thunderbirds were Athlon's premire CPU, the Duron was essentially the same, but because it flunked certain tests during manufacturing, it was given a smaller cache and clocked to lower speeds. The Thunderbird is simply a Socket A CPU. The duron is the cheaper version of it, though it is very oc'able. But nowadays who cares about the duron, it's kinda unimportant since XP's are so plentiful and cheap.
In conclusion, you have an 1.3GHz AMD ATHLON THUNDERBIRD(for the third time )

edit: It might have seemed like the Thunderbirds appeared after a certain mhz, but in acuality it was simply a newer design that debuted for the same platform, socket A. Kind of like how the Thunderbird has been succeded by the Athlon XP.

JavaFox

There have been many revisions to the Athlon core. The first Athlon was called "K7" -- a .25 micron processor with 512K of half-speed cache. They then released a version of the K7 fabricated at .18 micron. The Thunderbird is the code-name for a .18 micron Athlon with 256K of full-speed cache. That is the distinction. While there were a few Slot A Thunderbirds, every Socket A Athlon that came out previous to the Athlon XP (Palomino) was either a Thunderbird or a Thunderbird with less cache (Duron). Thunderbirds faster than 1.4GHz were not created.

DriveEuro

Thanks. Finally I know.

digitalwanderer

I just got a 1.3 t-bird in the mail a couple of weeks ago and was thinking of picking up a new mobo, memory, & PS to swap it into Blue this weekend to up her a bit. Do you think I'd notice a big difference? (I'm planning on only getting 256MB memory for now, the wife will kill me enough as is. )

Frodo301

From what I see Blue is the PIII 800 oc to 944, so yes you will very likely see a noticable difference. Unless you've went to using Win XP and I was unaware, I don't think the lack of 256 megs is going to hurt you too much in Win 98se. Lastly I've had the same types of problems with my little wife lately about my *cough* hardware/electronics addiction as well. She just cannot see why I have the need for more speed syndrome. Just be happy with what you have, she says. Hopefully I'll be replacing my mb and cpu soon though, gotta feed that habit. She can shop for clothes and shoes.

Matth

If it's a 1300 (200 FSB "B"), and not a 1333 (266 FSB "C"), I'd suggest selling it to someone with an old 200 FSB motherboard and buying an XP, or unlocking it so you can run it at 133 x 10 instead of 100 x 13, and take advantage of better memory bandwidth.

JavaFox

She wouldn't kill ya, Dig, if you bought a ECS K7S5A ($53.99 shipped) and a stick of 256MB PC2100 Crucial ($61 shipped). Alternatively, you could also use any PC133 you have laying around. And, yes, I think you'd notice the difference.

digitalwanderer

Urh, I think it's a 266FSB...the fella who gave it to me I think mentioned it. I'm gonna have to scrape off all this thermal paste and find out & get back to ya.

I wimped out yesterday and only spent $10us. $5 for a game for the 2 year old, and $5 for a 10MB ISA NIC w/5ft cable. (Hey, it's useful to have around...I've been looking for a cheap one.)

Me little sis came with though and went a little nutzy though which was fun! She picked up all the bits necessary to network her new notebook with her old POS, a new keyboard, a game, and a happy & positive attitude about buying your own PC bits and fixing things up yourself. (Well, more like buying new pc bits and having your brother fix it up...but I like that just as well. )

Me and my bro are going to have a fun afternoon fixing up her old POS PB next week. I got a PCI V3 3000 sitting on a shelf here for it in addition to all the other goodies me sis picked up for it.

The mobo will wait, I'm still in trouble for UT2k3 & NOLF2.