AMD 1GHz ‘Thunderbird’ processor
Oct 25th, 2000 | By Archive
AMD 1GHz ‘Thunderbird’ processor
Date
: 10/25/00 – 10:56:58 PM
Author
:
Category
: Processors
Manufactor:
Price: $270
Thanks to for supplying this 1GHz AMD T-Bird to OC Online.
Introduction
About a year and a half ago AMD was always one step behind Intel in producing and inventing new cpu’s. AMD would release their 450MHz chip and the day after Intel proudly announced their 500MHz cpu. This was the way things happened for a fairly long time, but recently the tide has been changing. Intel is having major problems with releasing Pentium III’s above the 1GHz mark, and their P3 1 GHz CPU is still hard to find even after over 6 months of being ‘released’. Another bad move Intel keeps making is hindering the performance of their new Celeron (better known as Celerimine) with a 66MHz fsb, making AMD’s Duron processor king of the hill in the low budget market. Another huge advantage for AMD are their prices. Today you can buy a 1GHz Athlon processor for half the price Intel charges for their 933MHz counterpart. All of these factors together are putting AMD into first place in the retail CPU game. Today we’ll test an AMD 1GHZ chip and see if Intel should really be afraid of them.
Specifications
AMD is using the 0.18 micron Thunderbird core for all their Athlons built after June 2000. Before that, the Athlon was
a Slot A CPU (mechanically simlilar Intel’s Slot 1), with on-PCB/off-CPU L2 cache.The Thunderbird core brought the L2 Cache onto the CPU die,
as well as less heat.For these new chips, AMD decided to go back to the socket packaging that was already in use in their K6, K6-2 and K6-3 chips
we’ve all heard of. The main difference between the Thunderbird variant and the earlier K75/K7 variant CPU’s is the cache memory. The K75 had the
L2 cache memory running at 1/2 or even 1/3 of the cpu speed. With the Thunderbird, AMD introduiced full speed cache just like Intel had been using
in their ‘Coppermine’ cpu’s. This change really boosts performance and gives Intel a serious run for their money, performance-wise.
- 1.0GHz (1000MHz) clock speed
- 10x multiplier
- 37 million trasistors
- 64-bit exclusive 256kB on-die L2 cache memory at the same speed as the core
- 462-pin Socket A design
- 1.75v core voltage
Maybe you have heard this before, but AMD is building cpu’s with both aluminium and copper interconnects. Copper is said to be better because of
certain conductive properties which let the CPU run more efficiently, hence cooler.This is why AMD is using the copper material on all their
chips of 1.1GHz and above(as well as a few ‘binned down’ goodies). For overclockers, it is important to get your hands on a copper chip, which
can be recognized by it’s blueish tint. The ‘copper’ chips are only made in AMD’s FAb30 plant located in Dresden. This plant uses a blue polishing
die, so it is easy to recognize a chip coming from Dresden. All of the CPU’s coming out of AMD’s Dresden plant are copper ‘Thunderbirds’
(the new variant), with a few aluminums coming from Austin. If you have a Thunderbird variant, this means that the chip has on-die cache memory
running at the same speed of the cpu itself. The Thunderbird is available from 750MHz and up. For the chips from 700MHz to 850MHz the default
core coltage is 1.70v. Anything above uses a default core voltage of 1.75v.
Installing the cpu
A cpu is worth nothing if there isn’t a good motherboard available. The type of motherboard you want is most likely one with lots of features
and great stability. Features and stability used to be a problem with earlier Athlon motherboard models, but time, and a few companies,
have produced some excellent motherboards in recent months.For this test, we used the ABIT KT7-RAID motherboard which is one of the best
AMD motherboards available on the market today.The board is very stable, has Softmenu III, which lets you overclock your brains out, has an
onboard RAID controller, and much more.A review of the KT7-RAID is coming very soon.
Installing the cpu onto the motherboard is really a piece of cake. You just align the pins on the cpu with the holes
on the socket, put the cpu in, and lower the handle to secure the cpu. The cpu can only be inserted in one way on the motherboard so there is
no danger of putting it in wrong.
Of course we can not run this cpu without a cooler on it, because approximately 8 seconds after booting, the cpu would probably die.
Our buddies over at found this out the [H]ard way some time ago.
The heatsink that came with this cpu is the Taisol one. For a standard heatsink this thing is already huge! It features a nice, quiet 4500
rpm fan and cools the cpu enough to be stable at 1GHz.
Overclocking
I was not expecting this cpu to overclock very well because it is already very close to AMD’s current chip limitations. The fastest T-Bird AMD is
selling is the 1.2GHz one, so reaching that speed was our goal.Since the T-Bird is already running hot, it was pretty clear we were not going
to gain much speed with the standard cooler.For this adventure we decided to test the Globalwin FOP-38 cooler that was sent to us by
. The FOP-38 features a 60mm fan rotating at an astonishing 7000rpm
blowing an amazing 38cfm over the heatsink. This beast outperforms every singe aircooled heatsink, even the Alpha PAL series and it’s way cheaper
too.There is one downside to this cooler: it makes a lot of noise! But the speedfreaks among us don’t mind noise if it means their cpu will
perform better.
To get the most out of this cpu, we needed to unlock the multiplier. This is easy enough to do with a steady hand and a
sharp number 2 pencil. Just put a layer of pencil on the L1 bridges and the multiplier is unlocked. A very well written how-to for this proces
can be found at . Once you have the multiplier unlocked,
you can easily adjust the multiplier thanks to the Softmenu III that is included in the ABIT KT7-RAID. Some people will wonder why we are not
overclocking the cpu by upping the fsb. Well, the current chipsets for AMD cpu’s are not very good at this and anything above 110MHz fsb won’t
boot or give stability problems.
Note by Adam: Anand over at Anandtech has quoted VIA as saying that AMD has pressured them into introducing FSB limitations on current chipsets.Some people might be able to run at 133mhz FSB, but most won’t get past 110mhz.This has been so since the first Athlon motherboard was made available.
We set the multiplier to 11x with the core voltage still set to default. The cpu booted fine at 1100MHz (11×100) and Windows 2000 loaded right away.
This thing was stable as a rock and took everything we could throw at it. It was time for the next step, 11.5×100 here we come! Again the cpu was
rockstable at 1150MHz although the temperature had risen about 2-3 degrees celcius.Now I felt it was time to see if this chip would be able to
equal AMD’s latest … the 1.2GHZ T-Bird. The multiplier was set to 12x and core voltage was still at default. The cpu booted and proudly showed us
it was cruising along at 1.2GHz!! But then we got a cold shower, and it hung at the Windows 2000 logo.Don’t get down so easily, we have a few
more tricks up our sleeves.We upped the voltage to 1.825v and booted again. BINGO … Windows 2000 loaded and the cpu took everything we could
throw at it :). The temperature rose a bit more, but our FOP-38 was able to handle the additional load and kept everything running.
We wanted to see if we could get it any higher so we changed the multiplier to 12.5x, which is also the highest multiplier supported by the
KT7-RAID. The cpu booted fine at 1250MHz, but froze at the Windows 2000 logo. We tried giving it more voltage, putting more cooling in the case,
but nothing helped. 1250MHz was just too much for out little air cooled heatsink.So, we tried to gain a few more MHz by upping the fsb a bit …
1208MHz was the best we could do and this required a 0.5v increase in voltage to get there from 1200mhz! Because I did not think that was worth it
I decided 1.2GHz was it.Maybe watercooling would have helped to push this beasty higher, but sometimes you have to understand you’re facing the
chip’s limitations.
Here’s a pic to show you how hot this cpu runs @ 1.2GHz under full load.
Let’s go and see how well this 1.2GHz monster performed in our benchmarks, shall we?
The test
Here’s a list of all the components that were in our test system:
- ABIT KT7-RAID motherboard with UL bios
- AMD 1GHz T-Bird cpu
- 2x 128MB PC133 ram
- Hercules Geforce GTS 64MB
- 2x 15GB IBM drives used in a RAID-0 (striping) setup
The first benchmark we threw at it was the Sisoft Sandra suite …
Secondly let us see how well it performs in our favorite game Quake 3: Arena
And how does 3D Mark 2000 v1.1 handles this kind of speed?
As you can see the 1.2GHz T-Bird cpu is performing really really well! The cpu and multimedia scores from Sandra are giving all the other reference cpu’s
a run for their money. The memory benchmark is showing very good memory performance! Actually it is the best I ever saw.
The Quake 3 scores are pretty high too, but when we reach the high resolutions it is clear that the videocard is limiting the cpu …
Looking at all the above scores makes me conclude that the AMD T-Bird is one fast chip that wipes out any contendors! If you are into games this cpu is
well worth the money. For business users a 1.2GHz cpu might be overkill, but hey … who does not like 1200MHz of power under the hood … I’m
sure they will be appreciated during the lunchtime Q3 battles.
Conclusion
Good
- Very fast performance
- Overclocks nicely
- Price is way lower then Intel’s counterpart
- Unlockable multiplier
Bad
- These chips get very warm
- No SMP chipset available … yet!