Well I would recomend, as I always do, the Asus version of this board. Toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/ has a review of I believe 12 different socket a boards. The Asus certain was the best of the bunch. Asus seems to always come out on top in speed and stablility. I personally would spend the money on a thunderbird 800. The price seems right to me right now. Also memory prices just dropped by 50% here in the US last week. It prices are at all similar to what they are here in the states for you guys, now is a great time to buy. Definitely read some of the articles at tomshardware. I think that you will enjoy them. Frank On Sun, 15 Oct 2000, Terry D. Cudney wrote: > Hi Frankie (and anybody else interested in this thread), > > Thanks for the input onthe Thunderbird chip. I checked the AMD website (www.amd.com) and found some info on the Duron and Athlon, but only one brief mention of the Thunderbird in a FAQ. The Duron, as you said is a less-cache chip. It has only 192k of on-chip cache. The Athlon's now in production, have 128k L1, and 256k L2 on-chip cache with a 200 MHz front side bus. The new Athlon L2 cache runs at full speed. The new Athlons use Socket A (as do the Duron's) not Slot A. > > It appears that the Thunderbird was the codename internal to AMD while developing the on-chip L2 cache system. The new Athlon's have it incorporated, along witht he new Socket A packaging. There's only $8 difference between an 800 MHz Thunderbird and an 800 MHz Athlon from my supplier here in Canada, so I figure that we'd be better to get a Socket A motherboard that will hopefully support future Athlons. Right now there are only three motherboards on the AMD approved/tested list that will support both the Duron and the Athlon: Abit KT7, FIC AZ-11, and Gigabyte GA-7ZX. I'm kinda leaning towards building a system with oneo of these boards and a Duron 600 (($100). When the prices come down on the Athlon 1.1 GHz it'd be easy to pop one into the board. > > Does anyone have any experience with motherboards from these manufacturers (Abit, FIC and Gigabyte)? or any other pointers? I'm looking for all the info I can get before I start collecting components. > > Thanks in advance to all > > > On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Frank J. Carmickle wrote: > > > Sorry guys. I have been in Sanfran for the last week. I had a fun time > > out there. > > > > Ok the biggest differences in the athlon the duron and the thunderbird are > > the amount and speed of the cache. The thunderbird has 256k of level two > > cache at full speed. This is a major advantage. I am not sure about the > > duron exactly. I believe that it just has a smaller l1 and l2 caches. > > The clasic athlons had 512kb of l2 cache that ran at different speeds > > depending on which processor you had. The fastest I think they run at is > > 400mhz. If you had an 800mhz processor it wouldn't be to bad. Once you > > get up to faster then that you take a big performance hit because it takes > > so long for the l2 to move to l1. Plus the pipe line can only be 64 bit. > > In the case of the thunderbird they are not user a wider bus then 64 on > > chip for some reason. That however is projected to be a 256 bit bus some > > time soon. > > > > I hope this helped anybody. If you have any more questions I may be able > > to help you out so don't hesitate to ask. > > > > Frank > > > > > > On Thu, 5 Oct 2000, Buddy Brannan wrote: > > > > > Nah, send your comments to the list....I'm sure I'm not the only guy who's > > > interested in what the difference is between Athlon, Duron, and Thunderbird > > > (besides Terry, that is)... > > > Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV > > > Voice mail: 877-791-5298 > > > Email: davros at ycardz.com > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Speakup mailing list > > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Speakup mailing list > > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > > > -- > --terry > > Name: Terry D. Cudney > Phone: (905)735-6127 > E-mail: terry at wasagacottage.com > WWW: www.wasagacottage.com > Postal: 18 Colbeck Drive, WELLAND, ON L3C 5B5 > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >
