Thorton has the same stability like barton except it run cooler . I used have 1 Barton 2800+ and Thorton . Barton 2200mhz run at 56C on my Volcano7+ while thorton 2250mhz run at 54C. I guess because the L2 cache was half..it is cooler.
I think your case is that your Barton L12 the cache part was injured accidentally when install heatsink or take off. Some heatsink require lot of pressure and that why you might leave a scar there. It can be mod to 512L2 Cache barton back easily with conductive ink .

If you want to know bout the performence difference in 256K and 512k L2 cache..it will be 1-1.5% faster ..but it wont do any different. Just push it to 2.4ghz and see it power.

This post has been edited by nimrod: May 30 2006, 08:39 PM

I not sure 2B pencils can work . But conductive ink comfirm can work. Throton 2200mhz = Barton 2180mhz. Something like 1% different. The K7 architecture itself has high Latency..the extra cache does not much improvement. That why olden day, presscott pwn Tbred and Barton easily.