DDR + Duron = Waste of Money?

[AMD_Man]

Ok, please don't get annoyed first of all. I'm building a cheap PC for a friend and I want to impress him how fast it is for the price so I can get other "customers". I've been posting a lot of questions on several forums to decide on the perfect budget components. My memory-related question is will DDR RAM and a Duron make any difference in performance on games and other memory intensive apps? I thought that instead of getting a somewhat more expensive 1 GHz Athlon/SDR system that an overclocked 1GHz(266MHz bus + DDR)Duron system would perform just as well if not better in some cases. Also, that would give my friend more headroom for upgrades before getting a new motherboard since DDR is becoming more effective with higher clocked processors. Will there be any performance difference with the Duron? Thanks in advance.

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[mpjesse]

Getting DDR for a Duron or Athlon is a good idea. DDR is only percent more (at the most) than SDR. The only think holding back a Duron with DDR is it's 128kb L2 cache- there are no bus and bandwidth differences between a Athlon/Duron. If you can't afford a Athlon then you can't afford a Duron- A 1.4GHz Athlon can be found for $117. CHEAP!!!

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

 

[killall]

you would get a cheaper faster system with a cheap tbird...

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

hey,

I had a SDR board and then a DDR board i have a duron 700. the sdr board was the kt7 using pc133 256MB of crucial ram. I would have a TV, IE5.5, and aim running and switching between windows would be some lag. Now with DDR i have a GA-7DXR, 256MB of pc2400 (however it is running at pc1600 using a 200mhz bus ='s pc1600). I have the same windows open, tv, ie5.5, and aim.. switching between them is fast. I was surprised actually.

So i have noticed a difference between sdr and ddr. with both ram types being about the same price go for it.

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[FatBurger]

A Duron has 64k of L2.

Why are people even debating the difference between SDRAM and DDR? From Crucial, they're exactly the same price!!



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[upec]

It is good idea to use DDR RAM especially you want to upgrade later.

 

[mpjesse]

No, it has 128KB of L2 and 64KB of L1 for a total of 192KB of cache.

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

 

[phsstpok]

got that backwards. 128KB L1 cache and 64Kb L2 cache.

from the AMD Duron Data sheet

<i>The AMD Duron Processor Model 3 features the
seventh-generation microarchitecture with an integrated L2
cache, which supports the growing processor and system
bandwidth requirements of emerging software, graphics, I/O,
and memory technologies. The AMD Duron Processor Model 3
high-speed execution core includes multiple x86 instruction
decoders, a dual-ported 128-Kbyte split level-one (L1) cache, a
64-Kbyte on-chip L2 cache, three independent integer
pipelines, three address calculation pipelines, and a
superscalar, ful ly pipelined, out-of-order, three-way
floating-point engine. The floating-point engine is capable of
delivering superior performance on numerically complex
applications.</i>

link

<A HREF="http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/duron/techdocs/pdf/23802.pdf" target="_new">http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/duron/techdocs/pdf/23802.pdf</A> (warning to 56K users: 1.50mb document)

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 08/18/01 09:35 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[madmike]

Now I know everybody seems to be OC'ing their processors (including me), but you might want to tell your buddy that it voids the warranty. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[Guest]

if you don't want to void your guarantee just overclock the FSB.

Anyway is there an unlocked Athlon 1.4 GHz sold? That's because my friend bought an AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz which is unlocked from the factory (the 4 things in the L1 part is perfectly connected already).


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[girish]

both Athlon and Duron have DDR bus which goes from the CPU to the chipset. using SDR at the other end of the chipset reduces this bandwidth potential of the Athlons and Durons to practically half! DDR, on the other hand with these processors will let them use their FULL bandwidth and thats it!

theres hardly any difference between the cost of SDR and DDR, but it will improve the performance significantly.

girish

<font color=red>No system is fool-proof. Fools are Ingenious!</font color=red>

 

[mpjesse]

WTF? That can't be right... I thought it was the other way around. So, the Athlon has a 256K L1 cache?! Hmm...

-MP Jesse

"Signatures Still Suck"

 

[phsstpok]

Wrong again. The Duron and the Athlon Thunderbird have the same size L1 cache, 128KB. It's the L2 cache that differs, 64KB vs 256KB.

 

[FatBurger]

Yes, the man with the funny name is correct. Which one, you ask? phsstpok.

It's stupid, but it's the way that it is.



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