Athlon 1.2G 266 vs. 1.3G 200

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I am building a new system and have the option of using an Athlon 1.2G 266FSB or a 1.3G 200FSB (same price). Is there any reason I should go with the 266 FSB? Motherboard is a KT7A-RAID.

Thanks
Josh
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
AXIA is good, but I wouldn't take an AXIA 1.3/200 over a different 1.2/266. Unless you have VERY good memory and AGP/PCI stuff. Then you can overclock it up to 266 (if you're lucky). A slightly lower clocked processor with a faster bus with always beat a slightly higher processor with a slower bus.

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ajmcgarry

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Yep I forth that,
and all Tom's benchmarks prove that as well. Go with the 266 bus.

Look at it way.
It's a 33% increase in bandwidth or
an 8% increase in processing power.


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G

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Thanks all,
Here is what I have decided on my system (and can't wait).

Athlon 1.2G 266
KT7A-RAID
256M C2 PC133 SDRAM
30G ATA 100 7200rpm disk
RAID setup of 4 10G 7200 WD Caviars (I already have these)
Leadtek GeForce2 Ultra
DVD Drive 16x/40x w/WinDVD Playback
Full Tower 400W
Soundblaster Live Value
Netgear FA310TX 10/100 PCI Card

Total cost is ~$730.

Anything I am doing wrong here?

BTW Now if I could only get my DSL installed

Josh
 

killall

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266 be good... mmm munch... me want 266... me will have 266 very soon... hehehe

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G

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I have a lead on a similiar system. Let me know if you are interested.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest thing. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

John Stuart Mill
 

lhgpoobaa

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Go for the 1200 C.
add some kingmax pc150 like i did
unlock your multipliers or find one "pre-unlocked"

im running 8 x 150 at full CAS 2.
nuff said.


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khha4113

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AXIA is good, but I wouldn't take an AXIA 1.3/200 over a different 1.2/266. <b>Unless you have VERY good memory and AGP/PCI stuff</b>. Then you can overclock it up to 266 (if you're lucky).
Sorry for asking, but why did you say that?

:smile: Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.
 

jmycal

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i might be wrong, but i thought to get the effects of a 266 fsb from your processor you need to couple that with pc2100 ddr ram.

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slvr_phoenix

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Not to sound mean or anything, but you are wrong. The Athlons use a double-pumped clock, making their litteral FSB only 133MHz. So using PC133 memory in them works just as well as PC2100. (In many cases, almost litterally as DDR really offers only a small performance boost, if it offers any at all.)

Frankly, I think it's the motherboard itself that offers the majority of the performance gain we see from Athlon DDR systems. If you look at the benchmarks from THG's review of some new motherboards, you'll see that some of the new ones using single-rate PC133 memory can end up performing better than some of the DDR SDRAM setups. That says to me that it isn't really the memory that is making the difference in most cases, it's the motherboard.

In any event, PC133 memory works just fine with AthlonCs.

There are probably even motherboards that would allow you to put PC100 memory into a system with a 133MHz FSB because the memory clock doesn't have to match the processor clock. Really though, what would be the point since now a day it wouldn't really save you any money to go that route anyway? Just because it could be done doesn't mean that there is a good reason to.

If the opposite of pro is con, what is the opposite of productivity? Ground first.
 

Matisaro

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If you have a kt7a get the 1.3(200) then set the clock multiplier lower and set the chip to 266 it WILL RUN, and you have the best of both worlds, the chip will be unlocked already and you probably will have one hell of an overclocker in that axia

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"
~Tbird1.3@1.55~
 

FatBurger

Illustrious
Ok, when you increase a frontside bus (eg from 100/200 to 133/266), you also overclock the bus speeds on your RAM, PCI, AGP, and I would assume ISA (since you have a KT7a-RAID). Now, it's set up as a ratio, not a strict amount, so you can overclock it more than it seems, but hardly any PCI cards will go more than a few MHz before crashing your system. Also, if you overclock your AGP more than a couple of MHz, it'll go from 4x to 2x, and negate the overclock.

As for DDR, it gives a good perfomance boost. Think of it as AMD versus Intel (from a strictly FSB perspective). A 266 Athlon will have a 266 bus speed (effectively), but a P3 has a 133 bus. Obviously, having twice as fast a bus will give you faster performance.

As for setting the chip to a 266 FSB...no, because of the reasons I described above. Also, what's the point of raising the FSB and lowering the multiplier to end up where you'd be if you bought the 1.2/266? It's a lot easier to raise the multiplier on a 1.2/266 (since it's a low multiplier in the first place).

BTW, this is kind of strange. I have a KT7a-RAID, 1.2/266 Athlon, etc...and my name is Josh too.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;)

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Matisaro

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Um no fat burger youre dead wrong.

when you get the 1.3 at 200 it will be set to 13x100fsb
set the MOBO fsb to 133/33/66(the kt7a raid has that setting i know i have a kt7a with a 1.33(266)@1.55) when you set the fsb to 133 you will now have a 13x133=1733mhz cpu, which would not run(unless you had a vapochill or a pelt waterblock system) but if you change the clock multiplyer to 10(from the default 13) you will have a 1.33(266) chip. With pci/isa/agp ALL IN SPEC.

so he can get a 1.2(266) chip, or use his brain and have a 1.33(266) chip, AND since its axia it will probably overclock to 1.5 like mine.

hope I cleared up your misunderstanding.

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"
~Tbird1.3@1.55~
 

Matisaro

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AND the reason to lower the clock multiplier and raise the fsb is to increase performance, and he will have a 1.33 ghz chip(thats the chips rated speed).

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"
~Tbird1.3@1.55~
 

Matisaro

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While on paper there is a difference between tbirdc and tbird b, in reality I have never(or heard of in this forum) seen a tbird b which wouldnt do a 266 fsb, and when you lower the clock multiplier(so you dont OC your chip to hell) there is no difference between a B and C chip.
for example
Tbird 1.33C
Tbird 1.3B
If you put those chips in a KT7A board with the fsb at 133 and the multiplier at 10 BOTH will run fine, they perform identically and for all intents and purposes are the same chip.
So if a 1.3b is the same price as a 1.2c buying the 1.2c is a waste of money because the 1.3b will run just like a 1.3c


PS: how many posts do I have to make to become something OTHER THAN A NEWBIE@!

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"
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ajmcgarry

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Don't worry your time will come to ascend!

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why the 266 over the 200? I have a 200 running at 300 stable on an ABIT KT7A + Raid.. I just have PC133 CL2 ram...

or am I missing something here? will the 266 run faster at 300 than the 200 would at 300?

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khha4113

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<b>when you increase a frontside bus (eg from 100/200 to 133/266), you also overclock the bus speeds on your RAM, PCI, AGP, and I would assume ISA (since you have a KT7a-RAID).</b>
I think you're mistaken. Abit KT7A-Raid is KT133<b><font color=red>A</b></font color=red> chipset and it has AGP divider of 1/2 of FSB and PCI's of 1/4 when FSB at 133MHz. You wouldn't overclock them at all, AGP still is at 66MHz and PCI's 33MHz.

:smile: Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.
 

slvr_phoenix

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Wow. I don't think I've heard more things wrong in a single post in a long time.

"<font color=blue>Ok, when you increase a frontside bus (eg from 100/200 to 133/266), you also overclock the bus speeds on your RAM, PCI, AGP, and I would assume ISA (since you have a KT7a-RAID).</font color=blue>"
That motherboard should have a way to change the dividers so that running at 133FSB isn't in any way out of spec.

"<font color=blue>As for DDR, it gives a good perfomance boost.</font color=blue>"
I'm not sure what your definition of good is, but DDR gives barely any performance improvement. And in fact some DDR systems perform worse than some SDR systems. DDR is much more hype than reality.

"<font color=blue>A 266 Athlon will have a 266 bus speed (effectively), but a P3 has a 133 bus. Obviously, having twice as fast a bus will give you faster performance.</font color=blue>"
This one is wrong on so many levels. I hardly know where to begin. First off, Athlons have a double-pumped 133MHz FSB, not a 266MHz FSB. The whole concept of a 266Mhz FSB is a myth made up by marketting to make the chip sound better than it really is. The Athlons still run on a 133MHz clock. As such, they have NO performance gain in this regard over an Intel chip. Yes, Athlons perform better, but that is mostly because of their better FPU and has <i>nothing</i> to do with their FSB.

"<font color=blue>what's the point of raising the FSB and lowering the multiplier to end up where you'd be if you bought the 1.2/266?</font color=blue>"
There really isn't much point for uppercuts. The idea though is that AthlonBs are able to perform as AthlonCs if you overclock the FSB and underclock the multiplier to give you the same GHz rating, but now with a better FSB. Sometimes you can pick up the Bs for cheaper than the Cs, and in those cases, it makes perfect sense to do this.

If the opposite of pro is con, what is the opposite of productivity? Ground first.
 
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I would say Yes, you did something wrong, if you want your network card to work reliably easily and forever, I would buy a 3COM
 

74merc

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"A 266 Athlon will have a 266 bus speed (effectively), but a P3 has a 133 bus. Obviously, having twice as fast a bus will give you faster performance."
This one is wrong on so many levels. I hardly know where to begin. First off, Athlons have a double-pumped 133MHz FSB, not a 266MHz FSB. The whole concept of a 266Mhz FSB is a myth made up by marketting to make the chip sound better than it really is. The Athlons still run on a 133MHz clock. As such, they have NO performance gain in this regard over an Intel chip. Yes, Athlons perform better, but that is mostly because of their better FPU and has nothing to do with their FSB.
I've got to call bs on this. If your logic held out, the P4 is only actually running a 100mhz fsb which is nowhere NEAR capable of the bandwidth available from the RDRAM, it would perform worse and its memory bandwidth would show up the same as PC100 on all tests, which it does not.
the Socket A motherboards are ALL DDR FSB, it is not done at the processor, it is done at the northbridge.
if what you said were true, we would have another 820 here, performance is identical or worse, but we don't, there is actually a 10% improvement, not huge, but its there. If the motherboard itself wasn't running a double pumped FSB, you would see no improvement whatsoever over SDRAM, if nothing else, the extra .5 hit of latency would slow it down.

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phsstpok

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Can someone clear something up for me?

1. The Athlon's bus is double-pumped. At 133 mhz the bus can theoretically tranfer data at twice the rate of a bus that is not double pumped. Hence, the 266mhz FSB label.

2. DDR SDRAM is also doubled-pumped. Data is also double rate, theoretically.

3. The Northbridge of the KT133A chipset cannot handle data at 266 mhz because it is not double-pumped. The Northbridge handles data internally at 133 mhz (assuming FSB speed is set to 133 Mhz). This is a major bottleneck for current Athlon DDR motherboards but it is also reason the same chipset works with SDRAM (the single data rate flavor, that is).

4. The new KT266 chipset is supposed to address the bottleneck problem and support much higher data rates.

Are these correct facts?
 

Matisaro

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1. Yes although the SD ram will not be able to take advantage of this.
2.Yes, and for all intentes and purposes ddr ram performs as well as sdram 2 times as fast(IE ddr 133 performs as sd 266) this does not generally translate into that kind of system performance boost(usually about 10%) but it is there.
3.Yes the kt133a can go to about 150mhz before craping out, but the kt133a doesnt use ddr ram, so it dosent have to.
4.Not sure, but if youre going ddr get an amd761 chipset, or the sis chipset on toms review, ::dosent trust sis::.

~Matisaro~
"Friends don't let friends buy Pentiums"
~Tbird1.3@1.55~