Question regarding AMD Athlon 4 purchase

[hollywoodhills7]

Hi guys,

A friend of mine recently purchased a Notebook (clone) from Fry's. The listed Specs on the Ad, the display, and the receipt showed "Athlon 4 1 Ghz".

When we were loading/checking the Laptop, I noticed the Properties showed '500 Mgz'. We called Fry's and after the Frys's rep made sure we had checked the 'my computer-prop' specs he put my friend on hold, came back and said " we've been getting calls on this, you should unintall the utilities and reformat' and it should then properly read on the registry, and that they should have done that before it left the store.

Any feedback from anyone on this issue ? Any other way to discern what the Chip actually is ? And if it is actually a 1 Ghz is it operating that way inspite of incorrect listing ?

Thanks, Mark

[Quantax]

If you download the program AIDA 32 that will tell you about the CPU along with alot of other things. There's also SisSoftware Sandra and Fresh Diagnose. The latter two can be found on MajorGeeks.com and the first by going to a search engine and typing in Aida 32.

[hollywoodhills7]

Downloaded program, ran it. Says it runs on 833mhz (2.5 x 333). Called Fry's, after a small runaround was told "yes, that's what they run on, you can return it if you like, or upgrade it for more money".

Aside from the fact that I imagine there's not much of a discernable difference, does anyone else think that 'roundup' is acceptable practice ?

Thanks guys, Mark

[Budfred]

I don't think there is such a thing as an Athlon 4 1Ghz.... There may be an Athlon 1000+ XP and it would run at about the actual Mghz reading you are getting.... Athlon chips are rated as what they determine to be equivalents to one of their earlier chips, not by actual clock speed. However, if the receipt said Athlon 4, it is a dishonest attempt to equate it to the Pentium 4.... I would be very careful to do business with any company that plays that game....

[pave_spectre]

The first Athlon XP im pretty sure was the 1500.

A 1GHz should be the thunderbird (or K7) and should run at or very close to 1GHz.

I certainly dont think they ran on a 333 bus, might want to check this but the multiplier should be 10 and the FSB should be 100.

[pave_spectre]

Just re read it and realised you said notebook, and that version IS an "Athlon 4" one of their mobile chips. Dont know what the settings for that should be. Plus notebooks have all those power saver features that can reduce the CPU speed to extend battery life, which may or may not affect any readings.

[Budfred]

Oooppss, I have never heard of the Athlon 4 and after trying to figure out what speed it really runs at, I wish I still hadn't heard of it. I just spent about 15 minutes going around in circles trying to find this on the AMD site and still don't know. I know there must be a way to do it, but I give up... Sorry for the misinformation...

[saphalline]

AMD mobile chips are notoriously difficult to find specs for. As far as I know, the Athlon4 uses a 200MHz DDR FSB, and comes in speeds of around 800MHz to 1.2GHz. I have no idea what speeds are used when power saving goes into effect.