Newegg had a Athlon XP1600+ AGOIA for $57, so I bought one to replace the Athlon 950 in my girlfriend's puter, which had been running great at 1140 for almost a year.
So I installed it and reused the Thermalright SK-6 / Delta 60mm fan that had been on the 950. Nothing fancy. It still just has one 256Mb stick of Samsung PC2700 that I put in when I built it, no heat spreader. The mobo is an Iwill XP333 (AliMagik chipset).
She booted up fine and showed the XP1600+ at startup. Then I started overclocking. Like the Energizer bunny, it just kept going, and going, and going. Eventually I found the limit and backed it off just a hair for stability's sake. The voltage is set at 1.85, the FSB is at 165, the multiplier is at 13 (!), CAS 2.5, "fast", and the ratio is at 5:1 (perfect 33 for the PCI bus).
At startup it now shows XP2100+, but I don't think that's correct. Maybe it's just the BIOS limit? Doing the math, as I understand it, 165x13 gives me 2145Mhz, which is just a little bit higher than a stock XP2600+. Could that be right for a 1.4Gb processor, or am I having a flashback? Temperature? CPU is at 113f!
Yup, you're right, Athlons are garbage. What a terrible waste of $57! :p