Building a new system....

[Terry D. Cudney]

Hi Frankie (and anybody else interested in this thread),

	Thanks for the input onthe Thunderbird chip. I checked the AMD website (www.amd.com) and found some info on the Duron and Athlon, but only one brief mention of the Thunderbird in a FAQ. The Duron, as you said is  a less-cache chip. It has only 192k of on-chip cache. The Athlon's now in production, have  128k L1, and 256k L2 on-chip cache with a 200 MHz front side bus. The new Athlon L2 cache runs at full speed. The new Athlons use Socket A (as do the Duron's) not Slot A.

	It appears that the Thunderbird was the codename internal to AMD while developing the on-chip L2 cache system. The new Athlon's have it incorporated, along witht he new Socket A packaging. There's only $8 difference between an 800 MHz Thunderbird and an 800 MHz Athlon from my supplier here in Canada, so I figure that we'd be better to get a Socket A motherboard that will hopefully support future Athlons. Right now there are only three motherboards on the AMD approved/tested list that will support both the Duron and the Athlon: Abit KT7, FIC AZ-11, and  Gigabyte GA-7ZX. I'm kinda leaning towards building a system with oneo of these boards and a Duron 600 (($100). When the prices  come down on the Athlon 1.1 GHz it'd be easy to pop one into the board.

	Does anyone have any experience with motherboards from these manufacturers (Abit, FIC and Gigabyte)? or any other pointers? I'm looking for all the info I can get before I start collecting components.

	Thanks in advance to all


On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Frank J. Carmickle wrote:

> Sorry guys.  I have been in Sanfran for the last week.  I had a fun time
> out there.
> 
> Ok the biggest differences in the athlon the duron and the thunderbird are
> the amount and speed of the cache.  The thunderbird has 256k of level two
> cache at full speed.  This is a major advantage.  I am not sure about the
> duron exactly.  I believe that it just has a smaller l1 and l2 caches.
> The clasic athlons had 512kb of l2 cache that ran at different speeds
> depending on which processor you had.  The fastest I think they run at is
> 400mhz.  If you had an 800mhz processor it wouldn't be to bad.  Once you
> get up to faster then that you take a big performance hit because it takes
> so long for the l2 to move to l1.  Plus the pipe line can only be 64 bit.
> In the case of the thunderbird they are not user a wider bus then 64 on
> chip for some reason.  That however is projected to be a 256 bit bus some
> time soon.
> 
> I hope this helped anybody.  If you have any more questions I may be able
> to help you out so don't hesitate to ask.  
> 
> Frank
> 
> 
> On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Buddy Brannan wrote:
> 
> > Nah, send your comments to the list....I'm sure I'm not the only guy who's
> > interested in what the difference is between Athlon, Duron, and Thunderbird
> > (besides Terry, that is)...
> > Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV
> > Voice mail: 877-791-5298
> > Email: davros at ycardz.com
> > 
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-- 
		--terry

Name:	Terry D. Cudney
Phone:	(905)735-6127
E-mail:	terry at wasagacottage.com
WWW:	www.wasagacottage.com
Postal:	18 Colbeck Drive, WELLAND, ON L3C 5B5