Once unlocked, our Athlon XP 1500+ chip was able to overclock a full 200 MHz from 1.33 GHz to 1.53 GHz, effectively transforming it into an Athlon XP 1800+. The 1.53 GHz speed was the maximum we were able to hit using the default voltage of 1.75V. We weren't using any exotic cooling methods either, just a Vantec CCK-6035D all-copper heatsink with a SUNON KD1208PTB2 80mm fan. We were able to boot at 1.60 GHz by bumping up the chip's voltage from 1.75V to 1.85V. Unfortunately, the system was not stable at this speed, as the heat generated by the increase in core voltage overwhelmed the cooling setup and caused lockups.
To test the stability of our 1.53 GHz overclock, as well as the increase in game performance, we ran a very small suite of benchmarks. We are highlighting the 3DMark2001 SE overall result as well as the low detail scores of Dragothic and Car Chase. The low settings are noted separately as these seemed to scale better with changes in processor speed.
3DMark2001 was tested at both the processor's stock speed of 1.33 GHz and the overclocked speed of 1.53 GHz. We also ran the benchmarks when the FSB was overclocked to 145 MHz and the multiplier set to the default. Note that this score will appear under the 1.45 GHz heading.
3DMark2001 SE Overall
Since 3DMark2001 SE scales very well with advanced processors and video cards, it's a perfect way to see how our overclocking results translate into performance improvements. The results confirm this, as the overall 3DMark 2001 SE scores show a marked improvement and is more than worthy of posting online.
