Building a new system....

[Frank J. Carmickle]

Well I would recomend, as I always do, the Asus version of this board.
Toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/ has a review of I believe 12
different socket a boards.  The Asus certain was the best of the bunch.
Asus seems to always come out on top in speed and stablility.    I
personally would spend the money on a thunderbird 800.  The price seems
right to me right now.  Also memory prices just dropped by 50% here in the
US last week.  It prices are at all similar to what they are here in the
states for you guys, now is a great time to buy.  Definitely read some of
the articles at tomshardware.  I think that you will enjoy them.

Frank


On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, Terry D. Cudney wrote:

> 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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> > 
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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
> 
> 
> 
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