Chips with everything

[lynchet]

OK so after my post on mobo's now one on chips, arrghs whats going on. Off I trundle to the fair expecting it to be like it used to be and what do I find, flip chips, socket 370, socket 1, 100 compatible, 133 compatible, 512 cache, 256 cache ??????? AMD's that are actually good !!!!!
Given I want to spend around £200 on a chip but can go higher if need be what are good buys ? - Ive seen Athlon 650's for £215 but Im still worried about going non - intel (dopey I know but old habits die hard) - what are Athlons like in comparison ??

 

[kryt]

Poo..

Ok you want it more complicated then that do you?

Ok.. Heres a scenario.
Two Guys. One buys himself a p3 550 for 200 quid, and motherboard for 90. The other guy buys himself an Athlon 600 for 150 quid, and a motherboard for 140. A year or so passes, and both are looking to upgrade what is now yesterdays news. Guy A has the flexibility. He has a slot 1 motherboard, that accepts 133mhz RAM, and will let him take further p3 chips, celerons, socket 370s with adapters, so wont need to buy a new mobo.
Guy B however, is stuck. Unless AMD loose more money by releasing a cheap and fast chip, which they wont, he will have to go to a p3 or its later equivelent. Doing so means purchasing a new motherboard, as well as the CPU...

Thats just an example - the performance is negotiable, what you save on buying the athlon chip, you loose out on the price of the motherboards and the compatibility/upgradibility. If i was you, i'd play safe, and get me a pretty fast pentium 3 to tide you over until the time comes to upgrade. It will cost you at first, but you will be glad of it in a year or so time.

anm^Kryten

 

[old.MeddlE]

Get yourself a p3 550 flipchip (coppermine), a mobo with 150MHz FSB support and some PC133 SDRAM. Et voila, an 825MHz p3 is born!

 

[old.TUG]

Or just buy something from meee instead

www.clockspeed.co.uk - new stock added this weekend

 

[DApea!]

Kryten, why upgrade to a Slot 1 after having an Athlon, the board will take a 1200mhz so what u gonna do? get a second hand 1ghz or summat in a year or so, the boards do 200mhz FSB, so .. erm 200mhz RAM there dont know where u got the only supporting 100mhz RAM idea from.

I would get the Athlon, From TUG

overclock to like.. 800 or summat.

 

[old.TUG]

Ok, special offer time

all athlon 550's @ 800 from me can be had for 230 inc vat if u quote 'BWMSG' when u order

 

[old.TUG]

Oh and kryten, at the mo its infact cheaper to get an athlon based system over a PIII based system as athlons are lots cheaper these days... new KX133 mobo's are only gonna be 105 quid an'all and will take athlon chips of the future no doubt...

Not that i am biased towards amd, but there ya are... I personally want a coppermine for me BM6 along with a converter from www.powerleap.com

[This message has been edited by TUG (edited 22 February 2000).]

 

[lynchet]

Lynchets head spins

Thanks for the advice guys........ so another question. Just checking Stak's prices, they have 100 and 133 compatible chips. I assume I want the latter but they often have 256 cache not 512 like the 100's (there are ones with 512 but not, say, 600's) -- whats going on there - does the smaller cache matter

 

[old.TUG]

celerons - 128k L2 cache, on cpu die, at full CPU speed

PII/PIII on .25 micron process - 512k cache, using cache chips fitted to PCB, running at half the CPU speed.

New PIII 'coppermines' with a .18 micron manufacturing process - 256k on die L2 cache at full CPU speed.

As you can see, the full CPU speed cache means its just as fast overall because its 2 times faster than on the 'normal' PIII's yet half the size... On-die full speed cache is the way to go, thats why ickle celerons with 128k cache smack PII's to bits - faster cache = faster performance.

[This message has been edited by TUG (edited 25 February 2000).]