850 Tbird or 950 Athlon?

[Lonemagi]

Have a slot a machine here that needs some upgrading (I think like a new computer, but thats IMHO)

its a MSI MS6167 board with a 650 cpu on it, I have found:
1. 850 tbird - 42.00 USD
2. 950 Athlon - 149.00 USD
3. 1ghz Athlon - 249.00 USD (I didnt know they made these)

249 dollars I know will buy a nice mobo cpu combo, as will 149. But just for questions sake, what is better the tbird or the normal athlon?

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[slvr_phoenix]

The T-Bird <i>IS</i> the normal Athlon. Thunderbird was just the inter-company code name for the CPU core before it was mass marketted.

<pre><A HREF="http://www.nuklearpower.com/comic/186.htm" target="_new"><font color=red>It's all relative...</font color=red></A></pre><p>

 

[Lonemagi]

Hmm, been wondering the diff for a while. Dont matter now, gonna just build a new sys for a lower price. Thnx though

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Actualy slvr_phoenix your wrong.....

The Original Athlon only came in Slot A form.....

Later on AMD Produced the Thunderbird (T-Bird) in LIMITED quantities for Slot A...infact it only went to Computer Companies like HP and Compaq etc....

And the Slot-A t-bird would NOT work correctly on a VIA KX133 based chipset....only worked on AMD 751's......

The difference between Original Athlon and an Athlon T-Bird u might ask?

The Cache my friend....the cache.....

The T-Bird had it's L2 cache On-DIE at full clock speed unlike the original athlon whom had external L2 cache chips alike the P3 Katmai's.....The T-Bird came with 256K of L2 Cache anmd the original Athlon had 512 @ ½ speed, and later 2/3's and than later 2/5's of clock speed.....

Athlon 500 - 700's had a divider of ½ @ 0.25 Micron
Athlon 750 - 850's had a divider of 2/3's @ 0.25 Micron
Athlon 550 - 750's had a divider of ½ @ 0.18 Micron

Anything above 850Mhz was 0.18 Micron's and had a divider of 2/5's of the core clock speed.....
Thats all for the Original Athlon's....the reason for the variations in L2 Cache speed is they had External L2 cache chips.....expensive to make, and were not very reliable/stable and high clock rates....

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[ejsmith2]

Yeah.

Processors are all kinds of afu. Even the Durons change around like that too.

But the bottom line is, what can you afford?

P4's @ 3600Mhz ()wNz J00 4LL!!!!!!

 

[Ncogneto]

The 850 t-bird is the best and will go in your board nicely. If you wish purchase a GFD and you can easily ovberclock it to 950.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!

 

[tastim]

I just want to know where you got those ridiculously high prices from.... in town you'd be hard press to find a 1gz anything priced over 60 bucks... unless you're talking about one of the major ripoff chains ala Best Buy or CompUSA

 

[Ncogneto]

Read the post.......SLOTA....ala classic.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

an 850 T-Bird..LoL...he'd be hard pressed to get it going on his board...

as for the prices...its Slot-A......Slot-A was phased out over 2 years ago now......its like trying to find a Slot 1 P3 500 Katmai for a GOOD price......

Best upgrade path is to buy a new MB and CPU....get like the MSI 745 Ultra and a AXP 1600+....shouldnt run u more than $150 American.....add some DDR Ram....lets just say it'll cost u $200......

as for someone saying the Durons have switched around like that...thats totally false....the Duron was NEVER released in Slot-A format.....infact its always been more or less the same....always in Socket A Packaging....Always has 64K L2 Cache...always has a 100Mhz (200MHz DDR) FSB.....there's only 2 different core types of Duron's....the Spitfire's which went from 600Mhz - 950Mhz and the newer Morgan's which bebuted at 1.0GHz and goes to 1.3GHz as of right now......

Difference between Spitfire and Morgan Duron's ??

Morgan has Advavnced Pre-fetching, Intermal Thermal Diode, and SSE Tech.

its literally the same as an AXP but is stripped of 192K of the L2 Cache and its FSB is bottlenecked to 100Mhz (200MHz DDR) Also the Packaging, AMD has kept the Duron's on the old Ceramic (grey) packaging as oppsoed to the AXP's Organic Material which is either Green or Brown......

Anyone else need some info? I'm here to dispense it....

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Lonemagi]

Never knew th t-bird didnt have the external L2.. thats why I was never sucessful at OCing my old 900 athlon.

I just though my mobo was bunk. Thanks for the info guysm, but I foundsome nice deals at mwave for a board that goes ddr and sdram. Let my boss ease his way into the current generation of computers.

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Yep...T-Birds dont have External Cache......

And yea thats prolly why u couldnt OC on ur 900....

is the board an ECS K7S5A ?? or an ASUS A7A266 ???

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Lonemagi]

*trying to remember* it was an Epox kxr7 .. or something like that. A buddy of mine has it now, and I cant remember the exact model. Was an ok board, got all of it for a USD 190 barebones system. Had to send it back once, but the 100 cpu/133 ram devider system never ran stable for me.

Tried ocing it via FSB, had it right under a gig, but not very stable, but with good temps.

The one here, cant OC, my boss woulnt like that, and we are tying to get by on a small upgrade bidget, and like I said, I found some good deals thatwill keep us not cutting edge, but running smoothly.

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[Ncogneto]

an 850 T-Bird..LoL...he'd be hard pressed to get it going on his board...

as for the prices...its Slot-A......Slot-A was phased out over 2 years ago now......its like trying to find a Slot 1 P3 500 Katmai for a GOOD price......

The slot-A tbird will fit just fine in that board, as it uses the AMD irongate chipset. They are easy to fine and pretty cheap..pricewatch still has a few listed as well as ebay. It is nothing like trying to find a p3 for a good price.

Anyone else need some info? I'm here to dispense it....

Great! It would however be nice if the info was correct.


It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!

 

[marneus]

it is probably cheaper to buy a Kt333 based board & a XP1600 + some ddr than a 1ghz slot A, that is my advice...

no-one shouts louder than someone who is being ignored, or in the case of techies, to be heard over the noise of their PC's ;-)

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Slot-A chips do not come by Cheap...
and my info was correct....if u read a few of my other posts on this thread i SAID u NEED the AMD 751 (irongate) chipset in order to run a Slot-A T-Bird......the VIA KX133 chipset could not do it with stability.....so hows my info incorrect???

U say the Slot-A T-Bird are selling for a good price ???
U think the 800Mhz Slot-A T-Bird for $62 is a good price ?? u can get a Socket A 1.2GHz 'C' type for $60 on pricewatch...hell u can get an AXP 1600+ for $52...so i say...its still not a good price.....

As for his board beign able to run the Slot-A t-bird properly...thats undecided....are there any bios's released by MSI for that board to support the T-Bird core ???? im not positive on that but they most likely did not.....VERY few manufacturers did...as the Slot-A T-Bird was NOT intended to reach the Consumer market...but was to stay within manufacturers/companies liek Compaq/HP, E-Machine, IBM, etc....

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Lonemagi]

As for his board beign able to run the Slot-A t-bird properly...thats undecided....are there any bios's released by MSI for that board to support the T-Bird core ???? im not positive on that but they most likely did not.....VERY few manufacturers did...as the Slot-A T-Bird was NOT intended to reach the Consumer market...but was to stay within manufacturers/companies liek Compaq/HP, E-Machine, IBM, etc....

I checked MSI's bios updates before my first post, they support up to an 850 tbird, and up to a 900 athlon.

It will be a future upgrade, as we have decided to build one new pc, and scavenge the slot a board to replace a pII 400 AT comp.

An 850 athlon is better the PII, and it will run office apps, so 58 for an 850 is better than the 150 for a new board and cpu.

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

This is true....
Hell an 850 T-Bird is equal to if nto better than a 933 P3 =)

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Lonemagi]

which makes it a powerhouse in this office. Until I get the 3 new systems up...

Im workin on a Celery 1.2 pga HP machine....

and thats fast here...

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

1GHz...hell even at 850 that thing is faster than the 1.2Ghz Celery.........

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Lonemagi]

Im in the works of trying to get a real PIII....

maybe even a 7200 rpm drive... but thats really pushing it.. Im tempted to just build a new sys for myself and use it here.... Cad and office and corel all open at once with streaming audio puts a damper on perfomance

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Lonemagi on 10/08/02 08:57 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

LoL.....good luck...ur betetr off with some Durons even =)

BTW ive searched high and low on MSI's site and i have not found one link to anythign pertaining to the MSI MS-6167....nothing at all....i typed it in on a search on there site..it came back with nothing....theres no bios's for it.....hmmm.....

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Lonemagi]

It was under the archives in the bios section

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/bios/bos/spt_bos_detail.php?UID=267&NAME=MS-6167

"-Support Thunderbird CPU (800 & 850 ).
-Fix 900 cpu show error."

You dont have an <b>ANY</b> key? Your keyboard must not be Windows XP certified...

 

[Ncogneto]

this is EXACTLY what you said:

an 850 T-Bird..LoL...he'd be hard pressed to get it going on his board...

BS complete BS. Its works fine on that board...I know I had one.

i SAID u NEED the AMD 751 (irongate) chipset in order to run a Slot-A T-Bird......

And guess what? The board does have the irongate chipset.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

i said hed be hard pressed cuz i could not find the bios for the t-bird support......therefore it was not bs at the time........and im fully aware that the board has the Irongate chipset..thank you.....So what r u tryign to disprove me for and being so aragently rude ?

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[Matisaro]

The T-Bird IS the normal Athlon. Thunderbird was just the inter-company code name for the CPU core before it was mass marketted.

No it isnt, the tbird has ondie cache and is socket a(or a twisted slot a variant) the tbird will outperform the slot a athlon even given the 100mhz disadvantage.

Heatsinks, if you dont overclock, use the <b>STOCK!</b>