Duron or P-III?

[morc]

I'm about to put together a new system and I can't make up my mind whether is should get a Duron/Athlon or a P-III. My biggest concern about Duron/Athlon is that I can kill it in a second if the HSF dows not sit well while the preformance is much better than a P-III. Is that really so bad with AMD's processors (I have 5 years experience in building PCs but I haven't built any FC-PGA systems, so I'm a bit worried)? Which one shall I go with? Please spear me with the which-CPU-is-the-better-performer replies, I'm well aware of the pros and cons of the two CPUs - I'm a regular reader of Tom's Hardware Guide.

Thanks,


Morc

 

[Grizely1]

I don't know why people are so wierd about heat and AMD. I haven't had a single problem. The only problem is that if you don't have a heatsink on it, it will fry within like 2 seconds or something. If you have the heatsink and fan on it decently it will run fine. Go for AMD.

 

[LTJLover]

I think people overreact to that heat issue. When you put on the heat sink, you should be able to tell if it is making contact. I helped my friend put his Duron together, and there was no problem at all. It was easy to see that the heat sink was on there real well. Could have thrown the whole board around just grabbing the heat sink. Good choice with the Duron though. My bro's $200 P3 700 gets whooped by my friend's $60 duron 700.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[ledzepp98]

as the first 2 replies mentioned, it's not a big deal. as soon as you boot up, jump into the bios and check the temp. as long as the heatsink is on ok, it won't fry. the worst that will happen is that the temp will be a little higher than you want and you re-mount the heatsink...

 

[morc]

Just a followup to my original question: I've been repairing and assembling PCs for a long time and once I got tricked by actually an AMD CPU (it could've been an Intel, but it was a K6-2 if I remember well) where the heat sink was a bit pushed to one side and of course didn't make the proper contact with the CPU. The system was working fine for a while when it started to slow down and froze at the end. I'm not a newbie in PC building (I built 100+ PCs from the times of the 486 CPUs includeing all of mine except the first one) and I know how to put a heatsink into its place but since the silicon is kinda small on top if you just just missplace the heat sink a bit to one side will make the heatsink not to sit on the CPU and it's the same as if you wouldn't have any on it. But if you say so. I'm still hasitating a bit because of the overclockability of the AMDs and the problems with the VIA chipset (you have to agree with me, that Intel always madechipsets that if they worked they worked well). I have a friend who still strugles with an ASUS P3V4X (he has the latest BIOS and VIA drivers) and cannot get AGP4x to work. Can you comment on VIA chipsets too?

Thanks again,



Morc

 

[LTJLover]

It would be tuff for me to discuss much on the VIA chipsets seeing that I have never had a problem. I guess they are not as overclockable as say the BX intel chipset, but I have a VIA MVP3 chipset board, my bro has a Soyo 6VBA133 VIA P3 OCed to 115 bus, and my friend just setup his KT7 RAID with the VIA KT133 setup. I like VIA, especially now that Intel stuff uses Rambus. That stuff adds up and I don't want to deal with it considering the AMD stuff is just as good.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"

 

[yoda271828]

Besides, even if by some chance you screw-up and fry a Duron, you could just buy another one. It would still cost less than buying an Intel CPU

 

[Arrow]

I've had no troubles with the ASUS P3V4X in one of my systems. I'd recommend going for a Duron or a Thunderbird even.

Rob
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