rgart wrote:

thanks for all the info.
disappointing. I didn't expect serious heat issues. I just wanted a home for my voodoo2 SLI.

IMHO. At the time that processor was made, the AMD vs Intel 1000MHz Race pushed quality control of both brands.
In addition AMD Athlon power management was not working properly for long. It was only with the Asus A7V600 Mainboard with AMD Athlon 3000+ that I could actually turn on power management (StpGnt / Halt instructions), more then halving the CPU heat ouput.

A drawback of the golden orb heatsink+fan, is that one cannot buy new replacement fans for it. So I prefer other types.

There are other boards with power management support. I have a nForce2 board with S2k disconnect and a KT333 with a "cpu idle detection" option. Still, power management features don't really affect fully loaded power consumption.

There were quirks to Athlon boards and these features too. My nForce 2 board has inductor squeal with s2k disconnect enabled. I've also read of speed problems with these features.

swaaye wrote:

There were quirks to Athlon boards and these features too. My nForce 2 board has inductor squeal with s2k disconnect enabled. I've also read of speed problems with these features.

On the MSI KT4V 6712 (VIA KT400 chipset) enabling HALT results in the harddisk throughput being halved. Soundblaster live! midi synth gets distorted because of Halt or StpGnt. There may be more reasons why StpGnt and Halt were never enabled by default on such Athlon systems. IMHO the idle power usage is a real downer on that whole AMD high tide.
Nvidia probably did a better job, never tried their boards.

gerwin wrote:

You are right, but on earlier VIA boards be very suspicious: On the MSI KT4V 6712 (VIA KT400 chipset) enabling HALT results in the harddisk throughput being halved. Also Soundblaster live! synth gets distorted because of Halt or StpGnt. There may be more reasons why StpGnt and Halt were never enabled by default on such Athlon systems. IMHO it is a real downer on that whole AMD high tide.

I have too had the impression that it wasn't working correctly. I've wondered if Athlon XP notebooks perform well. They sometimes use VIA chipsets and undoubtedly have many power management features implemented.

I had an MSI 6712 with an XP 1700+ and my SAA7131 TV capture card would produce glitched frames with CPU idle halt enabled. I spent a long time thinking it was a driver/OS issue. 🙁

It's interesting that these power features were so problematic. Even the AMD 751 documentation describes these features. I wonder if it's simply that desktop motherboards weren't designed with their use in mind.

This reminds me - S2kctl is a util that can enable S2k disconnect on almost any Athlon chipset.
http://www.stargaz0r.nm.ru/main.htm
http://www.stargaz0r.nm.ru/pages/news.htm

swaaye wrote:

I've wondered if Athlon XP notebooks perform well. They sometimes use VIA chipsets and undoubtedly have many power management features implemented.

I have an Athlon XP based notebook: a Packard Bell PB07 (which I believe is a rebranded NEC Versa C200) and it's a real piece of shit. My family nicknamed it "the dragon" because of how hot it gets, with the loud fan coming on as its 'breaths of fire'.

It's very heavy but not very sturdy, the case is cracked around the hinges, it runs very slow even with lots of RAM, it literally kills batteries, as in the lithium cells go completely shorted (I guess it's a combination of heat and high power draw), runs off a humongous brick that doubles as a foot warmer, no built-in WiFi (and the mini-PCI slot is not populated nor operational), I used it with a PCMCIA WiFi card and I had to resolder the PCMCIA slot every couple of months because it'd get so damn hot the slot would desolder itself. The horrible Insyde H2O BIOS is hardcoded to downlock the CPU to ~600MHz when on battery and it can't be overridden through any means (I guess that's their 'fix' for the 5 minute battery life at full speed), did I mention it gets really really hot? One time it decided to randomly turn itself on in the middle of the night and since I put the lid down when not using it the LCD is noticeably darkened on the area that sits on top of the CPU when closed. It gets that hot.

My mom got it as part of a debt payment back in 2007 or so, XP runs dog slow on it and it won't do Vista/7 (corrupted graphics and no updated driver). I feel bad for whoever bought this at retail, it's a horrible machine. I feel like I should review/benchmark it or something just to show the world how awful it is.

133MHz wrote:

I have an Athlon XP based notebook: a Packard Bell PB07 (which I believe is a rebranded NEC Versa C200) and it's a real piece of shit. My family nicknamed it "the dragon" because of how hot it gets, with the loud fan coming on as its 'breaths of fire'.
....

What a fine tale. 😁 Yikes.

I've spent a lot of time messing with power management on my DTR Athlon 64 + K8T800M notebook. It's an eMachines M6805. It doesn't get excessively hot, thanks to a beefy cooling system with dual fans just for the CPU. But it is a ~90W CPU and if you game on it the beast does put out the heat.

Have you ever looked at CPU power state usage in XP's performance console? You can see if the CPU is entering C1 and C2. Maybe you should try S2kctl on it too!

I also live by RMClock on my Athlon 64. This program is compatible with Athlon XP-M. It lets me set up which multipliers are used by CnQ/Powernow and what voltage each uses. I can really reduce the the heat output with it. For example, the CPU's stock voltage at 2.2 GHz is 1.5v. It is stable at 1.325v. I found that 1.2 GHz is stable at a mere 1.0v. 800 MHz can be 0.8v. You can transform the power profile of the CPU quite dramatically.

But honestly this is why Pentium M was so astonishing when it came out. A cool 25-30W CPU with really solid power state support that outperformed AMD and Intel's P4.

That sure is a peculiar machine.
It is surprising that this laptop still survived itself to this day.

swaaye wrote:

An alternative to the aftermarket coolers might be the big Pentium II passive coolers that OEMs used. With an 80mm fan attached […]
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An alternative to the aftermarket coolers might be the big Pentium II passive coolers that OEMs used. With an 80mm fan attached they should be great. But I'm not sure if they are all removable from the PII they are attached to.

For example. Many of these on ebay for cheap. Looks like hex screws.

THIS!^ also i'd clean off the old thermal paste and use MX2 or AS5, then strap on a 120mm fan with zip ties preferably with heat sink like above.

sliderider wrote:

The Golden Orb is your friend […]
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The Golden Orb is your friend

(too lazy to take my own pics so I stole from the internet)

I also have one of the black heatsinks with a dual fan setup on another of my Slot A Athlons.

Looks great and probably would solve my dilemma but it means spending more money on this system.

Would a Thunderbird 650 run similarly hot like a 1000mhz?

Do the 650 cpu's have heat issues too?

I have one of those slot 1 coolers from my sisters old Compaq. came off a 450mhz pentium2, I think that thing would be alright with some some fans rigged up to it, not sure however since I have never utilized it on more than a 450mhz p3

rgart wrote:

Looks great and probably would solve my dilemma but it means spending more money on this system. […]
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sliderider wrote:

The Golden Orb is your friend […]
Show full quote

The Golden Orb is your friend

(too lazy to take my own pics so I stole from the internet)

I also have one of the black heatsinks with a dual fan setup on another of my Slot A Athlons.

Looks great and probably would solve my dilemma but it means spending more money on this system.

Would a Thunderbird 650 run similarly hot like a 1000mhz?

Do the 650 cpu's have heat issues too?

I think my slowest Slot A is 700mhz but I haven't done much with that one since I upgraded to a 950 so I don't really know how how hot the slower ones run. The Golden Orb that I have came off of that one, though.

I have a Slot 750 (model "K75") and I actually rigged the fan for 7v to make it quiet. It doesn't overheat.

The 900+ MHz models kick out more heat but still I've run Tbird 1400 and Palomino 2000+ with relatively small heatsinks. As long as they don't hit 80C they should be stable.

@Rgart - can you get some sort of voltage reading? Maybe you're inadvertently overvolted. You could even try undervolting if the board can go under 1.75v.

The 1000 MHz Slot A Athlon CPU was the first CPU that AMD thought needed two heatsink fans. Pictures are here:
http://anandtech.com/print/498/

Also, here are some slot-CPU heatsink comparisons from back in the day:
http://www.anandtech.com/print/502/
http://www.speedy3d.com/articles/cooler_roundup1/01.shtml