Athlon processor and bus speed

[Guest]

, I went to the computer store the other day looking at prices for processors, The computer dude told me,that if you go with an Athlon processor, that the front side bus runs at 200 mhz (only) I don't understand this. I was under the impression, that you could configure the bus speed for stability, and whatever memory you are using....
is he right?? can anyone elaborate on this ?
Any response is appreciated.....
Dr. Zeemo

 

[acron1]

The Athlon/Tbird CPUs run the same 100Mhz memory you are using. Don't let the guy at the computer store confuse you.
Technicaly the EV5 bus on the Athlon/Tbird operates at 200Mhz but that has nothing to do with the FSB used on your system.

 

[Guest]

Is this the "address" bus he is speaking of ?? (That's in the chip no?)
So, I can run PC100 memory with an Athlon chip, and a 100mhz bus, and every thing will be hunky dory?
Dr. Z.

 

[Grizely1]

The AMD Athlon/Duron/Thunderbird uses a 200MHz front side bus. Technically it's 100 though. PC100 should work fine

 

[JoeHead]

It's 100 mhz FSB (200 mhz to controller or something like that) in bios you can set mem to any mem speed ( I use Abit KA7)

Be sure to go with a socket and I believe the Asus board is your best bet (opinion only ... get many)

Careful with the marketing crap (PIV claims 400 mhz bus cause it is quad [4] pumped)

 

[Guest]

The 200FSB relates to the theoretical FSB - it's similar to DDR SDRAM in that the signal is sent on the rising and falling edge of the clock, thus a 100FSB Athlon has an FSB of 200. Strange, isn't it?

 

[Guest]

What "socket" does the Athlon processor use ? I am planning on using an ASUS board, that is what I userd when building my present K6-2 system and have had excellent luck with it...... Roughly how much should I expect to pay ???
Thanks for your response BTW........
This system will be used primarily for Hard disk music recording.
Dr. Zeemo

 

[JoeHead]

Kinda tru ElBobbo. The way it works on the rising and falling edge is right but your not correct with it being teh FSB to the memory. The actuall FSB for this is 100 mhz. I have an Abit KA7 and teh manual tells me so and all the reviews will tell you the same if they toch on the architecture.

To set mem to 100 mhz on my board I set to Host Clk, 66 mhz = Host Clk - PCI clk & 133 mhz = Host Clk + PCI clk (PCI clk at 33 mhz and Host clock [FSB] at 100 mhz)

 

[JOJO]

The Athlon processor you should get is the socket A, not too many slot A out there anyway.

As for the Asus board, it's the A7V you want. (it's the kind i have)

Also from what i've been reading, the Abit kt7 and kt7 raid are also just as good.

Yes, the internal speed of the cpu is 100Mhz, just like the pentium 4,

But athlon uses ddr or something (maybe double pumping or something) to get it up to 200 external. Just as the intel uses quad pumping to get their P4's "400Mhz bus"
(someone pleez correct me if i'm wrong, thanks)

And if you haven't bought the ram yet, get PC 133 ram instead of PC 100.... but PC 100 will work in there as well.
It's not that much more expensive

Hope some of this helps

 

[Arrow]

An Athlon runs at 100mhz External FSB.

Rob
Please visit <b><A HREF="http://zidane222.cjb.net" target="_new">http://zidane222.cjb.net</A></b>

 

[jclw]

Jojo:

Question re: your A7V

What speed do your AGP and PCI buses run at? Mine seem to be running at 100MHz and 50MHz respectively with FSB at 100MHZ and the motherboard seems a little wonky because of it. How fast are yours running?

 

[acron1]

You can use your PC100 SDRAM on the TBird boards.
I have/had 4 Asus boards(2 P2B, 1 P3B-F and now a A7V) all of them have been great so I am a bit pro Asus. That does't mean that other boards from Abit, Soyo, Gigabite etc. are not just as good. In my case I 've had so much luck with Asus I am sticking with them (I can't wait for their DDR offering fot the TBird).