AMD T-Bird: Opinions Please.

[DaveP57]

I'm kinda new to the world of computers, I've owned one for only about a year now, and am considering paying a small bussiness to upgrade my motherboard and install a faster CPU. This particular bussiness has a good deal on AMD T-Bird Chips. I'm more familiar with the intel family of chips: PII, PIII, PIV, but don't really know much about the AMD chips. What is the T-Bird Chip comparable to? Would this chip be a good choice for a gaming system? Any opinions greatly appreciated. Thanks. DP57.

 

[killall]

athlons are a lot faster than pentium 4s clock for clock and slightly faster than p3s... a 1.4 athlon performs a lot better than a 1.7 pentium 4 in nearly all circumstances (unles syou work a lot with video) they are also cheaper as is ddr which is faster than rdram... intel really got something wrong when they released the pentium 4, oh well...

if in doubt blame microsoft...

 

[DaveP57]

Point of confusion: Your referring to Athlons. Is this the same chip as the T-Bird? Thanks. DP57.

 

[BigRat]

it very much depends on what motherboard you want to use though. But anyway you should take the time to get all the latest drivers and patches to make sure you system runs stable.

:redface: :frown: :lol: :tongue:

 

[BigRat]

athlon is the name to the whole family. t-birds are the second generation athlon, t-bird c are the third gen.

:redface: :frown: :lol: :tongue:

 

[girish]

Palomino the fourth... etc!

the Tbird will compare to the Pentium-III, while teh Duron will compare to Celeron but at times its at par with the P-III!

girish

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

 

[SerArthurDayne]

Bah! At 1ghz, my 25 dollar Duron is equivalent to a PIII 933 with similar specs. At 1.1ghz, it outperforms it by far.

All that with a 20 dollar heatsink, and the thing never hits above 50C at full load.

"Laziness is a talent to be cultivated like any other" - Walter Slovotsky

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

T-Birds (athlons) are clock for clock faster then a p3 and a p4. T-Birds run a little hot so you may want to invest in a good heatsink and fan.

All in all for the price it is a very good chip and as far as motherboards go try and stay away from VIA. That is a biased statement cos i dun like them. *shrugs*

Think first, if you have nothing worth more then a dollar don't say anything at all.

 

[girish]

who likes VIA? they buy it because they have to!

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

Unfortunatley not alot of alternatives to Via. But do you think they have improved recently?

<font color=blue>THG needs 2 change the sig' of the week errrr century!</font color=blue>

 

[AmdMELTDOWN]

dude, the Tbird is a pos cpu, fragile pos exposed core brittle pos no doubt, no thermal protection rma in the thousands -/+ 1 Million(no make that +Mil), tburnt sitting on a pile of sh!t(VIA) makes it worst, your nightmares have become reality! welcome! you've saved money but will you save your hair from falling out?

(c)2001 the AMD/VIA curse. all right reserved

"<b>AMD/VIA!</b>...you are <i>still</i> the weakest link, good bye!"

 

[girish]

AMD is good but only supports DDR, ALi Magik is the best of the lot, SiS730 and SiS735 look good while the nVidia nForce is desparately awaited by everybody.

I have seen AMD, SiS730 and KT133, have a KT133 board at home and curse it everyday!

But this time round, the KT266 with its proprietory V-Link architecture and a new soutbridge, I am really looking forward to see it. Lets hope the've improved!

girish

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

 

[Guest]

Some of that maybe right, but for someone like myself melty dude, AMD cpu/combo's are cheap enough to make mistakes and learn very quickly about which is great for novices. Right here right now price diff' is something like $700 aud for simular Intel basics without checking for exact prices.

But if I wasnt interested in learning and wanted something to turn on and not worry about I would have bought an Intel (not P4) and put up with reasonable performance and be very bored not being able to play with it! But I reckon I can get this T'bird rock solid and stable in time, have some fun on the way, best of all learn about puter building then wollow in the results..heh.

<font color=blue>THG needs 2 change the sig' of the week errrr century!</font color=blue>

 

[girish]

that is it!

<font color=blue>die-hard fans don't have heat-sinks!</font color=blue>

 

[DaveP57]

Thanks for your replys, everyone. You've answered my question.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Athlon Thundabirds come in 2 flavours currently (soon to be 3)
the 'B' model running at a bus speed of 100 and the better 'C' model running at 133.
(the athlon 4 is comming out soon with is a new and improved core design)

the athlon B is a sight bit better than the pentium3
the C is alot better.
athlon Vs pentium4? big debate there.
certainly alot cheaper.
faster running general applications and FPU (floating point unit calculations). the FPU in the pentium 4 is very weak.
plusses for the pentium 4 include a very high memory bandwidth which make it excellent for all sorts of audio/visual applications, especially video applications.

since your looking at busness apps the athlon is probably the way to go, as it provides comparable performance at an affordable price.

some problems and issues with the athlon though:
1. they run hotter than the p4, meaning you should have a good quality heatsink/fan combo.
2. they like a decent powersupply as well. (300W or greater)
3. they have NO thermal cutoff, so if you cant put on a heatsink correctly you can fry the chip.
also the core of the chip is prone to cracking should you inproperly mount the heatsink. (get a pro to do it if not 100% sure)
4. Via based motherboards (of which a vast majority of them are) are known to have bugs/issues. some are overblown, others are not.

hoep all this crap helps.


My hamster really wants to give you a big kiss, you sexy hunk you!

 

[Guest]

Hmm, ya hamster loves me awwww.

<font color=blue>THG needs 2 change the sig' of the week errrr century!</font color=blue>