Some oldschool play with Athlon 64 5600+ (minireport)

[FlanK3r]

Last week we had small session with ROG enthusiast in Czech republic. And my idea were benching the old one and new one platform. So Skylake as modern CPU platform and as "older" rig I used old Athlon 64 x2 5600+ Windsor. Why? Because I have only two complete PCs with mainboard, memory (from my friend) and CPU from oldiest days. Yes, in my collection are few Athlons XP or Pentium 4, but I have not the boards and old SDRAM memory.





So nice and good Athlon 64 5600+ 🙂 The basic clock of this CPU is 2600 MHz and have 2 cores at 90nm technology. The motherboard I used relatively modern Asus M3A-MVP Deluxe which is AM2+ socket also! So this board can hold Phenoms ans some Phenoms II also! As memory I found from my friend HyperX Blue 1066 MHz DDR2. The GPU was first time Asus 8800GTX Aquatank, nice oldies monster, but I must it change because the liquid has dried up after many years :), the card was overheating, in idle 85 C 😄

The post code card was required...in PCI slot.



Next card to this machine was another monster from nvidia. GTX9800GX2 :), nice hot sandwich. Oddly enough this sandwich was OK for 3D test also.


Long, long time I had not Athlon in my hands. So I started carefully. The air cooler on CPU was only "better box" style. SO the main problem can be overheating. And what about auto overclocking, it will be OK? This board was very good, high segment with very solid VRM in this era.


For more MHz I used FSBclock software


HWBOT PRIME benchmark at 3068 MHz


wprime 3003 MHz


Cinebench R11.5 at 3003 MHz


Superpi 1M 3128 MHz and 3120 MHz




Sometimes was PC very unstable after some crash at high clocks. The load default settings not helped and I cant get into the Windows :). Around 1.5V were temps relatively hot, 58 C at cores in idle without CNQ. I think, this was one of limitations and Windsor are not the best for break 3.3 GHz at air :). Afterall, it was very friendly and funny day with a lot memories and nostalgy.
Until the Zen launch it was one of my last AMD benchmarking, maybe next year once I could retest my best FX-8350 with LN2 and after I will hope for many fun with Zen chips. Please AMD, be good as in Athlon 64 days or Phenom II days...Keep my fingers cross 🙂

[NemesisChild]

This brings back memories for me as well.
I was an avid AMD builder early on: 5600+, 6000+, 555, 940, 955, 965, 1090T, and 1100T.
That 1100T was by far my best AMD chip, it actually could overclock to 4.24GHz with a H50.

The whole Bulldozier letdown was the reason why I switched to Intel and never looked back.

Come to think of it, I still have some DDR2 memory laying around.

[FlanK3r]

Yeahh, I had Phenom II too. Those CPU were very good overall and nice for tweaking. I have still one of my PC with x6 1090T BE in my parents:) (it need light upgrade with SSD and more DRAM)
This old Athlon was fun. I would like organize something similar next year with oldiest setups 🙂

PS: I have still next one AMD setup, Vishera (and second PC in home is i7-6700K with Maximus). There are some many mistakes in reviews, example with WOT gaming at FX and lagging, low FPS. But it is not true if set manually few things in BIOS. I have between 60-95 FPS in WOT games. Next year I hope for Zen CPU. Last chance to be competive with Intel i7 4c/8t CPU.

[Menthol]

I was trying to put together an old AMD setup last year, I found my FX 70 chip and an Opteron 165 and some old DDR and DDR 2 but my old A8n32 sli board didn't want to cooperate

[FlanK3r]

wow, old FX...dream CPU 🙂