Author: Aaron Gordon
Date: 04:13:41 08/07/01
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Probably the best bet would be to look around on www.pricewatch.com for a dual Thunderbird/Palomino board. Those destroy P3/P4 systems with ease. Infact my liquid cooled 1.65Ghz thunderbird (overclocked from 1.0) is faster than Vapochills P4-1.7 @ 2.3Ghz. Couldn't imagine TWO at 1.65ghz. :) Anyway the Thunderbird 1.4Ghz has the AYHJA core stepping which means it can overclock a little bit higher than the AXIA without increasing the voltage nearly as much. Also it runs 20% cooler than the regular Tbirds. The 1.4's usually get 1.6GHz overclocked with ease (on a 0.25C/W HSF or better), some even 1.7GHz. If you get an enermax 650 watt PSU (530 watts sustained) you should be able to get two 1.4's and run them at or over 1.6Ghz without any problems. For my AXIA unfortunately I had to modify the board to apply more voltage than the default max of 1.85v (at 2.08v, 2.5v max now). Also I had to modify the three 5 volt mosfets on the motherboard due to the voltage drop @ high wattages (combination of high mhz & voltage). 1.4GHz tbird & palomino shouldn't have that problem at all though. You can get palomino's (Athlon-MP) at 1.2ghz but they usually have trouble making 1.5GHz.. and if it's mainly for chess the added SSE instructions to the alreading existing 3dnow1/2 won't make any difference. Also the palomino is quite a bit more expensive... so for now a dual 1.4GHz Thunderbird system at ~1.65ghz is your absolute best bet.
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