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Athlon Gold Finger Review
K7OC Board
The Testing
The test system is made up of the following components:
AMD Athlon 500MHz w/ 650MHz core
and 3.3ns cache modified by Tom
Leufkens to 800MHz and 1/3 cache @ 1.9v.
Asus K7M Slot A Motherboard Bios 1209
128mb Generic PC133 SDRAM from 1stchoicememory.com
Diamond Viper V770 Ultra
Maxtor 20.4GB ATA/66 7200rpm Hard Drive
Intel 21143 10/100 base-T Ethernet Card
Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM
You will probably notice that yes my Athlon is running at 1/3 cache. Therefore
I cant test this with 1/2 cache, and H.Oda is not willing to let me beta test
his cache changing program, so I will only describe the tests results with 1/3
cache.
Like I said before, installation is easy, and I just looked at the back of the
K7OC Board for the settings.
Athlon @ 500MHz 1.6v 1/3 cache ......FAILED not
even a post
Athlon @ 550MHz 1.6v 1/3 cache ......PASSED booted
into Win98 and ran Timedemo
Athlon @ 600MHz 1.6v 1/3 cache ......PASSED booted
into Win98 and ran Timedemo
Athlon @ 650MHz 1.6v 1/3 cache ......PASSED booted
into Win98 and ran Timedemo
Athlon @ 700MHz 1.65v 1/3 cache ....PASSED booted
into Win98 and ran Timedemo
Athlon @ 750MHz 1.75v 1/3 cache ....PASSED booted
into Win98 and ran timedemo
Athlon @ 800MHz 1.85v 1/3 cache ....PASSED when
voltage upped to 1.9v, received same results as solder mod with K7OC Board
Athlon @ 850MHz 1.95v 1/3 cache ....FAILED would
boot into Win98, then froze in Timedemo
Athlon @ 900MHz 2.00v 1/3 cache ....FAILED would
boot into win98 with blue screens half way and freeze
The card performed very well. I dont know what the deal was with 500MHz but
i've still tried and gotten no post. But then again, whats the point of getting
one of these devices if you are just going to run it at 500MHz? Its also not
the card's fault that my Athlon wouldn't do more than 800MHz, its pretty much
maxed out at 800MHz with air cooling. The card performed pretty much the same
as the solder mod, except it can't change the cache. So if you dont want to
do a lot of soldering, but you are up to doing a little, a simple cache change
and this here card and you would be set. Or even better, I've received word
that H.Oda's L2 cache divider changing program is going to be available by the
end of next week. We shall see.... I was happy I was not able to bump up the
bus speed on the K7M and boot with my current mod. But with this Gold Finger
Device I could boot at much higher speeds because the FSB wasn't affected.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I can say that this is definately worth every penny you will pay for it. Especially at this low cost introductory cost. It does its job, and does a dang good job of doing it. Tom told me he is thinking about raising the prices so if you want one of these you better grab one quick. Would I recommend this card? You bet!! It is the only card I have tested, but it is EXCELLENT! I dont have anything bad to say about this except that there is no way to change the cache, but from what I understand Computer Nerd is going to be selling a Gold Finger Device with optional cache change settings. This card is a great buy anyways.
Goods:
-Small & Compact
-Very Affordable
-Nicely manufactured and designed, Looks Professional
-Works EXCELLENT
-Doesn't use really high voltage like Outside Loop's Afterburner
Bads:
-No mods or ways of changing cache
Rank: 9/10
Review written by: Anson
