Author Topic: AMD T-Bird AXIA Upgrade (Read 796 times)

Toad · « **on:** June 18, 2001, 11:04:00 AM »

I'm about to begin the "upgrade" process. From a little scouting around it seems these AMD T-Birds w/ the AXIA stepping provide a pretty good value with the potential for decent O/C when that becomes necessary. They seem in plentiful supply at <$150 delivered.

Open to all suggestions, have a few questions:

1. Is it important to get the 266mhz Bus or is there no real advantage over the 200mhz Bus?

2. Same question on RAM. Is the 184-pin DDR going to be worth the price diff over the 168-pin SDRAM? Will I notice?

3. What's the gouge on MB's for this CPU? I'm fond of Abit and Asus for MB's; which models provide the speed, ease of use and best O/C potential?

4. Fans. I understand these babies put out the heat. Any suggestions for a really good CPU fan? (Don't really want to try water cooling. The thought of a leak while I'm away from the computer brings visions of firetrucks dancing in my head.

)

5. O/S. I'm still running W98. Is it time to change? To what?

Appreciate any/all input. Thanks.

popeye · « **Reply #1 on:** June 18, 2001, 12:02:00 PM »

What he said....It's about that time for me, too.

A couple more questions:

What's AXIA?

I have a TNT2 Ultra vid board with 64 meg. I notice that the video memory usage never even comes close to 32 meg. I'm guessing that there is no advantage to getting 64 meg on my next card. True?

TIA

popeye

DB603 · « **Reply #2 on:** June 18, 2001, 02:08:00 PM »

S!

I am running an AMD T-bird coded AXIA.It overclocks well.But still some of them don't.Depends of manufacture weeks etc. weird stuff ;)For cooling I use now a compressor(like in the fridge) and the CPU runs at +23'C on heavy use ;)On idle it can drop below 0'C so I have to keep some progs running so the temp stays above 0'C.Condesed water ain't good for a CPU

The performance of DDR mobo's ain't best yet,so if Ya get a good KT133A-mobo,U will get more value for the money invested.DDR Mobo's cost more and DDR RAM pretty much more than PC133 SDRAM.I can get 512Mb PC133 SDRAM for price of 256Mb DDR RAM...go figure.
Cooling.A good heatsink is a must.Also the quality of the fan on top of it is important.You don't want a jet engine whining in Yer room.Alpha for example makes good heatsink/fan combinations.
So I would stick to a good KT133A mobo and PC133(or even PC150) with AMD T-Bird.Best value now before better DDR RAM supporting Mobos arrive IMO...

bloom25 · « **Reply #3 on:** June 18, 2001, 06:09:00 PM »

The AXIA Tbirds (and also AVIA) have been very good overclockers. (I haven't personally tried one though. Maybe this summer... )

It is very important to get a 266 Mhz model, they are much more powerful than the 200 Mhz models. (The 1400 with 200 mhz bus performs about on par with the 1200 with 266 bus.)

As for the RAM, I'd probably go for the DDR ram, it's not much more expensive anymore. If you must buy a system now, the best motherboards are using the AMD 760 chipset. (The Asus A7M266 is an example.) The cheaper, and not as good of performing boards, are those based on the ALI Magik 1 chipset. (Asus A7A266 board being an example.) As good as the AMD stuff is now, Nvidia has a new chipset coming early this fall that will boost their performance 20% if the early testing with the Asus A7N266 can be believed. If you don't need to upgrade right now, I'd consider waiting for these boards to become available, they are impressive to say the least. Using the Nvidia nForce chipset they are able to use a dual channel setup for the DDR ram, which doubles memory bandwidth. This gives a huge performance increase.

As for fans, AMD has a list of certified fans that are all pretty good. You can also look up the fan roundup articles on www.tomshardware.com for more info.

Defiance · « **Reply #4 on:** June 19, 2001, 05:36:00 AM »

Hiya's,
Just got a TB 1.2 (266) for my Asus A7a266 mobo
Code is AXIA 0115 VPBW

As above the AXIA/AVIA are usually great for OC'ing

If you have decent cas2 pc133 go for a AXIA "Y" if you want to move to ddr type ram get a 266 fsb version cpu

BTW u CAN use a 266 on a 200 mobo, It's kinda like dx stuff it's backwards compatable
My 1.2 266 runs fine on bro's A7v (200 fsb board)

Just take the plunge n get the 266 version and it's ok to use on whatever type of non-266 mobo

Have Fun

Def

ps...DB i see your into OC'ing niceone me too

Gotta love this sig i saw on some OC'ing forums........

Intel Inside is a Warning lmao

Staga · « **Reply #5 on:** June 19, 2001, 07:20:00 AM »

Asus A7A266 supports both SDRAM (PC-133, you are propably using this kind of mem right now) and DDR memory so you can save some money and run your mobo with your old memory chips and buy DDR-RAM later if/when you want to push your PC to the limits.
There might be other mobos supporting both type of RAMs but this one could be good choice.
http://www.asus.com/products/Motherboard/socketa/a7a266/index.html

[ 06-19-2001: Message edited by: Staga ]

MrRiplEy · « **Reply #6 on:** June 19, 2001, 07:52:00 AM »

A7A266 is not a good board to buy. It loses 20% to A7M266 in memory benchmark. Installing DDR to it would, then, be a waste of money.

Staga · « **Reply #7 on:** June 19, 2001, 09:16:00 AM »

Do you meant it loses 20% if it uses PC-133 mem against DDR-RAMs or DDR against DDR ?

Because right now DDR chips costs twice as much as SDR-RAM (At least in here) so with price of 256mb of DDR I can buy 512mb of SDR.
And because I already have 512mb of PC-133 why shouldn't I use them if I can ?

MrRiplEy · « **Reply #8 on:** June 19, 2001, 09:20:00 AM »

According to the test results I've seen the board with AliMagik chipset loses 20% in DDR speed compared to the AMD761 chipset.

If I would be planning to buy a DDR setup I'd buy AMD no question about it. The benefits gained from DDR are already small enough - no use wasting them on a bad chipset.

Toad · « **Reply #9 on:** June 19, 2001, 09:54:00 AM »

Thanks to all who have answered so far. I'm learning a lot here and it counterbalances some of the hype one reads on the hardware sights.

I can wait until Fall. What Bloom said sounds pretty attractive. OTOH, as prices fall some things become awfully tempting.

Anyone want to comment on the OS thing? Should I just stick w/W98 or is it time to jump?

I think I'm going to pick up a $90 30GB WD 7200RPM ATA100 HD today. I've had good luck with the WD's and it seems like a lot of storage for the $$. Any comments on that?

Staga · « **Reply #10 on:** June 19, 2001, 11:53:00 AM »

I don't have any touch to WD's hard-disks but I'm using IBM 75GXP series 45gigs disk now and it sure rocks. Some sources say new 60 series GXP is even faster and more quiet than one I use now.

Staga · « **Reply #11 on:** June 19, 2001, 01:39:00 PM »

I was just reading local pc-magazines article (Mikrobitti 6-7/2001) about new Athlons DDR mobos.

Differencies between those three models speed (Asus A6A266 (Ali Magic1),A7M266(AMD760) and MSI K7T266 Pro (Via KT266)) were very small.

Gameing speeds, tested with Quake3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, MDK2 and Evolva in 800*600 16bit and 1024*768 32bit were if using Asus A7M266 with AMD760 as a reference value 1:
Asus A7A266__0,97
MSI K7T266___0,97
Asus A7M266__1,00

Office use (programs in use:Winstone 2001 and Business Winstone2001)
A7A266____0,99
K7T266____1,00
A7M266____1,00

3D-rendering (Bryce 3D)
A7A266____0,99
K7T266____0,98
A7M266____1,00

Tests were made in Athlon Thunderbird 1,2Ghz, 128mb DDR mem and GF2 Ultra.

All mobos got their good points:
A7A's capability to use several types of memory-chips.
K7T266 has a inbuilt IDE-Raid conroller
A7M ..hmm nothing special in this mobo.

My guess is all of them are good choices.

MrRiplEy · « **Reply #12 on:** June 19, 2001, 02:13:00 PM »

If you would put comparisons about DDR vs KT133A SDR system you'd still think there's nothing special about A7M board. Or any DDR system for that matter.. The differences are very small compared to the price.

This is why I'd take the AMD based board - it simply performs the best of the ones available at the moment. Not by a wide margin, but that's pretty impossible anyway unless the other chipsets were a total failure.

The 10-20% change in data bandwith doesn't seem to affect application benchmarks as much as you'd expect - this was also noticed in the review I saw earlier.

What goes to the IBM HD the 60 series was made to replace 75 series due to several reports on disk failures on the 75 40gig+ models. It seems the 3-disc structure wasn't yet reliable enough. (Read from IBM BB)

Defiance · « **Reply #13 on:** June 20, 2001, 06:50:00 PM »

Toad,
To give ya a taster of some AXIA's ability i will post this

Got my Dangerden replacement waterblock earlier so just for peace of mind i cranked this 1.2 266 upto 1.33 then 1.4 then 1.5
Upto 1.4 was 1.75 vcore 1.5 took 1.85v

Gotta love AMD !

Code on die reads......

AXIA 0115 (yr/week) VPBW
9 not a Y

Some say 9's and y's are best, Hell i just think any AXIA AVIA's are rockin

Have Fun

Def

BTW... If you read this post Bfalcon4 i swear i got it back to stock by the time you read this