AMD Athlon 1000 socket: Slot A

What the Athlon 1000 is

The AMD Athlon 1000 is a 1000 MHz single-core desktop processor from March 2000. It runs one K7 Magnolia core at 1000 MHz with no turbo, so 1 core gives 1 thread. Cache is 512 KB of external L2 at one third of CPU speed with 128 KB of L1 on a 180 nm process with 22 million transistors. Power is rated at 65 W in a Slot A SECC cartridge with part number AMD-K7100MNR53B A on a 200 MT/s EV6 bus with a 10x multiplier at 1.8 V.

The gigahertz mark on a cartridge with third-speed cache closes the classic Athlon line, which is why the 1000 carried flagship pricing at $1299 at launch. AMD launched the Slot A 1000 on March 6, 2000 with the Orion 900 and 950. The chip supports MMX and Enhanced 3DNow.

Gigahertz cartridge clocks with external cache suit late Slot A towers with SDRAM and AGP 2X graphics. The heavy SECC package needs the retention cage. That is why the 1000 shipped in flagship Athlon towers before Thunderbird.

Socket and motherboard compatibility

The 1000 fits Slot A flagship desktops with Magnolia support. It needs a 242-lead slot board with a 200 MT/s EV6 bus and a BIOS that lists Athlon 1000. The Socket vs chipset: what decides whether a CPU works guide covers pairing rules.

Flagship SDRAM towers with AMD 750 and KX133 paths are the natural match. Boards listing the 1000 MHz Magnolia accept the cartridge with a 65 W cooler. Socket A boards take Thunderbird PGA chips only.

Memory, PCIe and cooling

Memory is SDRAM through the board chipset, matched to the board DIMM sockets. The cartridge has no memory controller. Flagship 750 boards commonly run PC100 pairs for 200 MT/s parts.

A 200 MT/s EV6 bus ties the cartridge to the chipset, while AGP and PCI hang off the chipset. No PCIe lanes originate on the cartridge. Cooling uses SECC cartridge heatsinks locked to the retention cage.

Upgrade paths

On the same slot, an Athlon 1000 (BA) such as AMD Athlon 1000 (BA) keeps the board while moving to on-die Thunderbird-B cache at 54 W when the BIOS lists BA strings. The BA swap trims power while adding full-speed cache. An Athlon 950 on the same list drops 50 MHz with Orion cache.

A move to Socket A Thunderbird needs a new PGA board. The Slot A page lists the Pluto to Thunderbird-B range for planning.