Duron vs Athlon

[Guest]

I need to upgrade my son's pc which is primarily used for games like Quake, Halflife, Baldur's Gate. Which processor would provide the most bang for the buck for gaming purposes?

 

[Guest]

The Duron wil perform in "games" almost identically to the Thunderbird Athlon. The additional cost of the TBird is beneficial if you absolutely want the maximum performance, and you are going to be crunching numbers, like compiling code, etc... otherwise the Duron if great for everything. It does not suffer in performance as the Celeron compared to the Pentium III does. The two AMD processors perform almost the same. If you are looking to get a 1.2Ghz CPU, you will have to get the TBird Athlon.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, any motherboard recommendations for an 850 Duron?

 

[phsstpok]

You did not say what your son is using now. It is also not clear if you want to upgrade just the chip or the whole computer. If you would provide specific information like CPU, CPU speed, components, amount of memory, motherboard brand and model (if known), or computer brand and model, people here will be able to give you specific assistance.

In general, the most bang for the buck will come from a good graphics card. Any competent processor paired with a top notch graphics card will yield incredible performance.

A high speed processor with a mediocre graphics card will yield mediocre performance. However, even a modest processor, like a celeron 766 or a Duron 750 (much more powerful) paired with a Geforce 2 GTS, Pro, or ultra will have excellent performance for games.

 

[Guest]

MSI K7T Master (not K7 Master, which supports DDR), AOpen AK73 Pro (or 1394) and Asus A7V are all good boards among others.



- Better go Green than Blue!

 

[TheAntipop]

You forgot Abit KT7 RAID as a good motherboard. But as far as gaming, a Duron will be just as good as a Tbird and yes, depending on how much you want to spend, id get a GeForce 2 GTS or a MX. I would recommend an ATi Radeon, but they are more all purpose video cards and less strictly gaming cards.
I wish my parents would upgrade my system, hehe

If at first you don't succede, skydiving isn't for you.
<font color=blue>Intel Inside</font color=blue> = Idiot Outside

 

[Guest]

Yeah, well I never pretended that this was a comprehensive list of good motherboards. I just mentioned a few off the top of my head.
I meant no disrespect for Abit board owners or any other good board owners out there.



- Better go Green than Blue!

 

[Guest]

The system in question is one I put together myself. It's about 2 yrs old now, so I think an upgrade is in order. It's a Micron board(ATX) with a 333mhz Celeron processor, 64mb SDRAM and a 16mb Voodoo 2000 AGP video card. Besides adding more memory and a new mobo/processor, will the graphics card have to go too?? I'm trying to keep this under $300. Thanks to all of you for your input, this is so much easier than the olden days of filtering through PC Magazine and Computer Shopper reviews.

 

[Celeborn]

The graphics card wont have to go no. I recently upgraded from a AMD k6-2 500mhz to a Duron 800mhz (with a voodoo 3 2000 and 128megs ram) And that over doubled the frame rates in Half Life (I get upto 100 fps now at 1024*768) No Half Life is not the most demanding of engines... but still... with an old graphics card its impressive. If your gonna get a Duron 850mhz ... it's a fast chip.. so yes your graphics card will become the new bottleneck of the system when it comes to games, but it will easily play any game out there.

 

[Guest]

" It's a Micron board(ATX) with a 333mhz Celeron processor, 64mb SDRAM and a 16mb Voodoo 2000 AGP video card. Besides adding more memory and a new mobo/processor, will the graphics card have to go too?? "

Would you drive a Porsche with a Yugo engine?

Your system will run with this Voodoo card but don't expect running Quake 3 at 1600x1200x32 or anything 32-bit for that matter.
Keep the card for now if you like but plan an upgrade if you're going to run demanding 3D games or apps.



- Better go Green than Blue!

 

[toonces]

try this setup (it's what i went for)
asus a7v mobo (@140$-150$)
duron 750mhz cpu (@60$-65$)
geforce ddr video card (@100$)

look around www.pricewatch.com for prices and shops. and look at www.resellerratings.com for the comments about the service of the shops. those three things should come in around 300$ and your new system will ROCK compared to your old one.

<font color=red>booyah, grandma, booyah..</font color=red>

 

[phsstpok]

I would say $500 will get you something speedy but $300 might be too limiting.

This would be my choice starting from the ground up

Abit KT7 mobo = $121
Duron 700 = $49
good heatsink&fan = $30
128mb Crucial PC-133 SDRAM = $61
Geforce 2 GTS video card = $161
Case and 300w PSU = $100

Total = $522

You can find cases under $100. If your present power supply is adequate you can save the $100. To save more money you could also go with a Geforce 2 MX for about $100 but I think the GTS would be worth the extra $61.

This config would also allow you to overclock (at your own risk).


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 01/25/01 03:30 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

Last week I got the Duron 800 and ASUS A7V, Unreal and Deus Ex run much faster. Deus was slow on my old K6-400. Also, the ASUS board supports the Athlon and faster disk IO (ATA/100)...future upgrading is great...I say forget higher priced INTEL !

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Yeah, but with his old setup his current memory has GOT to be a 66MHz DIMM. And that means it'll have to go. So into all that for a suggestion a new memory stick should be added in too. And that could jack up the price a bit. Especially since for better gaming a 133MHz DIMM is a must.

- Sanity is purely based on point-of-view.