AMD Athlon 1000 (BA) socket: Slot A

What the Athlon 1000 (BA) is

The AMD Athlon 1000 (BA) is a 1000 MHz single-core desktop processor from June 2000. It runs one K7 Thunderbird B core at 1000 MHz with no turbo, so 1 core gives 1 thread. Cache is 256 KB of full-speed on-die L2 with 128 KB of L1 on a 180 nm process with 37 million transistors. Power is rated at 54 W in a Slot A cartridge on a 200 MT/s EV6 bus with a 10x multiplier.

On-die cache at full CPU speed separates the BA cartridge from Magnolia cartridges with third-speed external cache, which is why the 1000 BA runs office software faster than the plain 1000 at matching clocks despite sharing the slot. AMD sold Thunderbird-B Slot A cartridges from June 2000 with Socket A twins. The chip supports MMX and Enhanced 3DNow.

Gigahertz clocks with full-speed cache and lower power suit late Slot A boards with updated BIOS strings. The BA suffix marks the Thunderbird-B cartridge line. That is why the 1000 BA shipped as the efficient Slot A flagship.

Socket and motherboard compatibility

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

Late SDRAM towers are the natural match. Boards listing the BA string accept the cartridge with a 54 W cooler. Early Magnolia-only boards with no BA microcode may refuse it.

Memory, PCIe and cooling

Memory is SDRAM through the board chipset, matched to the board sockets. The cartridge has no memory controller. Late KX133 boards commonly run PC133 pairs for BA cartridges.

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 heatsinks on the retention cage.

Upgrade paths

On the same slot, a plain Athlon 1000 such as AMD Athlon 1000 is the Magnolia counterpart with third-speed cache at 65 W. The BA swap is the efficient move on boards that list both. A Thunderbird-B Socket A part such as AMD Athlon 1000 (B) moves the same silicon to PGA when a new board is planned.

A move to Socket A needs a new PGA board. The Slot A page lists the cartridge range for planning.