first Athlon computer

Well I did it. After many years of intel computers I have my first Athlon. Oh I has a K6-2 350 sold it many years ago. But after that I did not like AMD. So I ran a P3 550 & P3 733 for a few years. I just got a A7V133. I was going to get a duron 800 for $62 I got a t'bird 800 for $71. I am now up and running in less than 1 hour. No problems with any drivers, no hardware conflicts and no crashes. Its even win 98se. The fan was so easy to put on a chimp could do it. So why is there all this crap about AMD. Thanks to this board I overclocked it to 900 no problem. Will go for more later. Thanks to all the AMD prople out there. To the intel people I still have my P3 733 but get a clue AMD is the current KING!

I put together my first AMD system in December (Tbird 900 +Abit KT7-RAID). It did take me over a day to get it stable. Blame this on the early Via 4 in 1 drivers the board came with.

But once the system was stable and video running at AGP 4x, I still had problems with the USB not working correctly. This took me a couple of more days to research and solve. I may have been lucky, for I have read about many users who have to use an add-on card for reliable USB operation with VIA based boards.

Right now my system is rock solid. It has never locked up. But I am sure that once I change the configuration (add a board, update the BIOS), there will be stability issues to correct (they will be correctable, but will require effort).

AMD is not to blame. All issues above are due to the VIA chipset. Once stabilized, the KT133 is fine. But it sure is a pain in the *ss to have to work on system stability. That is the nice thing about all of the Intel systems I have put together with Intel chipsets - They worked right out of the "box". Just like your experience above.

My next machine (in about 3 months) will be another AMD based system, but I will probably base it on the AMD 760 chipset (or whatever is seems best by then). The price/performance of AMD just can't be beat, (1 ghz for $160) and as long as you are careful, thermal protection is a non issue.

There is a issue with the core being delicate. I did not have this problem, but there are just too many posts with people crushing cores when installing HSF. This is an area where AMD deserves critisism. If you crush your core, you just lost your price advantage!

Does AMD replace chips with damaged cores under warranty? Anyone have success in getting AMD to replace a chip with a crushed core?

But for performance and price, it's a no brainer.

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