1 Gig Thunderbird for $209, is that a good price?

[Ghosth]

Robert, I think the answer your looking for is going to be tied to your current motherboard. IF it's a socket A motherboard it should be compatable.

Consult your Motherboard manual to see what it is compatable with proc wise.

GeForce Video should work in whatever system you plug it into. Same with the PC100 ram, although 128 mb PC133 ram is looking very affordable right now.

[GrinBird]

I agree on the AMD/Intel issue: Right now there is no reason whatsoever to stick with INTEL. And Skuzzy I think you should try AMD on one of your machines, I honestly dont think you will have trouble of any kind, except for the still missing Dual CPU option with AMD.
If I was to buy Mobo and CPU right now I would go for the 1000Mhz Athlon and I would choose this motherboard:

   

It has not got Raid, but it has support for DDR RAM which I consider as more important. I have no doubt that DDR RAM will be the RAM type of the future.
If you are about to choose between DDR RAM support and RAID you should consider that You can allways add an IDE-RAID card later while DDR RAM support cant be added later.
Faster RAM should give some perfomance boost in programs like AcesHigh, while RAID gives improved harddisk performance which wont give you more FPS in games, but indeed would be good for servers or makes your life easier if you work with Photo/music/Video editing or similar Harddisk intensive activities.

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GrinBird

[This message has been edited by GrinBird (edited 02-06-2001).]

[Westy]

 http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/weekly_cpu/

 This is THE link to check out current trends and what the lowest going prices are for AMD or Intel CPU's.

 -Westy

[This message has been edited by Westy (edited 02-06-2001).]

[Skuzzy]

I have the instruction set manuals and erratas for Intel and AMD processors.

There are some differences that Linux, for instance, worked around.  The latest generation of compilers for Unix can generate code that will cause some errors when running on AMD.  I have tried it and sure enough the return value when using certain math operations are different from Intel.  These would, in all likelihood, never show up in a MS environment.
There are also 2 MMX instructions missing from the AMD code.  These are emulated in software/firmware so they do not pose a non-operational problem.  They are just slightly slower.  They are also less likely to be used.
There are bugs in the Intel floating point code that are not present in the AMD code.  Unfortunately, software that works around thse bugs cause problems with AMD.  Again, if the software detects AMD versus Intel, it can be worked around.
Unfortunately, there are Unix's that do not detect AMD versus Intel and these particular operating systems have some problems with AMD.  Linux has done a good job coding around the differences between the two companies processors.

Look guys, I am not saying AMD is bad, nor am I saying Intel is good.  I am saying there are differences, however subtle, there are differences.  All of them can be worked around and some OS's have done so.  AMD has done a good job of documenting the differences so programmers could/can work around them.

Technology wise, AMD is by far and away a better processor.  Intel has sat on thier technology way too long.  The P4 is a joke and should have never seen a release day, in its current configuration.

I am very glad to see AMD finally making inroads into the OEM computer makers.  This is really good for the market.

If my original post lead some to beleive I was recommending people stay away from AMD, then I apologize, for it was not my intent.  AMD makes a good product which is technically superior to anything Intel has to offer, but if you have to run Solaris, or BSD, then you better be using Intel or you will have problems.

I think the only holdback AMD has ever had was the support chips for the processor.  Intel does have an edge here as they have been building thier own support chips for a long time.  VIA and AMD's recently released support chips have had some problems with maintaining compatibility with Intel support chips.  The differences here have remained pretty subtle, but just enough to require changes to some drivers and BIOS code.
If it were just a simple matter of unplugging the Intel chip and putting in an AMD chip, I would be there in a heartbeat, but there is more to swapping from Intel to AMD than a single chip change.

I hope that helps to clear things up.


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Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp. http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

[This message has been edited by Skuzzy (edited 02-06-2001).]

[prz]

yepp, Skuzzy, there is the "I play only here, I want save, I'm willing to spend nights to make it work" environment which is normally @ home, so I'm also running AMD & KT7 rig here, it's just great walking the bleeding edge BUT then there is the "work, MUST work all the time, skin of your teeth will be shaved if something fails. Great, you saved us 200$ BUT now the system is DOWN" ;-)  I wouldn't touch AMD with a 10-ft pole for the moment in serious business environment, it's more than "who's fastest and cheapest", it's the "who has support", "longest experience" and other boring crap decision process. Interesting enough that is true for many other things in technology, not processors only. Anybody worth his price in IT industry learned those lessons long time ago.

[LuckyDay]

FWIW, my dad has an ASUS P3V4X running a PIII 800 with no problem.

...this belongs a bit farther up.

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LuckyDay
"What're you going to do, bleed on me?"

[GrinBird]

 

Originally posted by prz:
I wouldn't touch AMD with a 10-ft pole for the moment in serious business environment, it's more than "who's fastest and cheapest", it's the "who has support", "longest experience" and other boring crap decision process.

Yearh I guess we have all forgotten the olī calculation error scandal with the first Penthium processor...Costet a lot of problems for many of the old Intel customers. Not long ago Intel had huge problems with delivery, they simply couldent produce enuf CPUs for the world market.
Also all the problems connected with the Rambus RAM, boards being called back and all several times because problems with the new chipsets. There has been many of that kind of cases lately. AFAIK AMD havent had any of that kind of situations yet.



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GrinBird

[bloom25]

Grinbird, although I would like to say that AMD has had a perfect record in terms of releases, that is not the case.  There are 3 things I can think of right off that AMD has had happen recently:

1.  The new 760 chipset was released, then production stopped when errors were discovered.

2.  The older 750 "Irongate" chipset had serious flaws that only allowed it to run AGP1x on all GeForce cards.

3.  AMD processors (at least ones currently available) still do not have any type of internal thermal protection.  This means if you don't have your heatsink and fan on correctly you will kill the processor.

Skuzzy:  I looked at the errata sheets on the Athlon, and I guess you are right.  The MMX issue doesn't seem to be any problem.  (Even if it was MMX is hardly used anymore.)

The FPU seems to actually be Intel's screw-up.  In a way, AMD is being punished for Intel's past mistakes.  Regardless, the FPU on the Athlon is vastly superior to the P3 overall.  In AH the Athlon will blow the P3 away.  I don't know the exact amount, but I'd say that an Athlon system configured exactly to a P3 system will probably outperform it by at least 10% in AH at the same processor clock.

I guess it all comes down to whether you are building a gaming rig or a server.  If you are building a gaming rig the Athlon is a much better processor.  For a server (especially a dual processor rig) I'd probably be forced to say that Intel would be better there.

 

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bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[LJK Raubvogel]

I've been running an Athlon 700 on a Asus K7M mobo for about a year. No problems whatsoever. It was funny, because I built a system for my friend who is a "only Intel" person, and he got 600mhz for the same price as I got 700mhz. Before the Athlon, AMD did lag behind comparable Intel CPUs, but now I would say they have made up that ground. I've been an AMD person for a long time, and suffered through the K5, K6-2 and short-lived K6-III.

[Voss]

I went and checked out a new computer store here recently (two days ago). They have great prices on Thunderbird boards, RAM and CPU's, not to mention video cards.

The tech that works there has a 1.2Ghz CPU running at near 1.8Ghz. His system has 19 cooling fans! I doubt I could afford that kind of rig, but he sold me on AMD for gaming.

They also had a hard drive swap out device there (hot swap) that allows you to change your boot drives, or any drive, in a flash! The device is really just a tray that the HD sits in, has two cooling fans, and the hardware to make the cable connection into a quick disconnect. So, what I did was...

I bought a new 40Gig HD and moved all of my 'other' software onto it. Nothing remained on the boot drive except Windows and AH. I defraged the system. Now the boot drive has 80% of the drive empty. I boot into AH without much of windows loaded, to save on resources, and AH is optimized to load as fast as possible. This is still on an AMD K6-2 450Mhz system with 128Megs of RAM. My frames jumped 10fps from the tower! I understand that adding more RAM will help on top of that!

Maybe I don't have to upgrade yet?