Athlon, Thunderbird?

[Guest]

hi,
am i right, that the Thunderbird from AMD the newiest cpu is anf the Athlon the older version?
Which is the better one, does the Thunderbird have a lot of advantages over the Athlon?
thanks
Chris

 

[LTJLover]

the original athlon was revised and became the thunderbird athlon. The original is no longer made, and athlon can refer to either. The thunderbird is the athlon with L2 cache memory on the CPU die instead of on the slot card external to the CPU. This was possible when the production went from .25 micron to .18 micron. The thunderbird is quite a bit faster due to the close location of the L2 cache. If I remember right, it is like 20% faster or so. You can still buy the old athlon, but why. It is probably more $$$ anyways because they are rare. The way you can tell what is what if it is called athlon is the amount of cache. If it says athlon 500 512Kb cache, it is the old external cache. athlon 700 256Kb cache, it is new. I think the slowest Tbird made is like 700 these days.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[soup20000]

There are many different versions of the Athlon.

- Slot A Athlon = Slot type (looks the same as a Slot 1 CPU from Intel) The Slot was the original type and is no longer made. It comes with 512kb of L2 cache @ 1/2 or (if over 750mhz) 1/3 speed of CPU.

- Slot A Thunderbird = Slot type (looks the same as a Slot 1 CPU from Intel) The Slot was the original type and is no longer made. It comes with 256kb L2 cache @ core speed.

- Socket A Thunderbird = Socket type (looks kind of like a Socket 370 from Intel but has many more pins) The socket is the new version that has been around since around may/June.

- Socket A Duron = Socket type (looks kind of like a Socket 370 from Intel but has many more pins) The socket is the new version that has been around since around may/June. The duron has only been made as a Socket CPU and comes with 64kb L2 Cache @ core speed)

All the types come with 128kb L1 Cache @ core speed.


AMD for Life!