Athlon question

[Jose]

Sorry guys, a PC question. I view it this way: it's a means of finding out how to spend the least possible on my PC, and reserving some money to Amiga hardware. :-D At least it's about the Athlon processor, not Intel and M$. I have this slotA motherboard that I was thinking on upgrading to the limit. I found two processors that run at 1Ghz. One seems to be the Classic Athlon, the other is a special slotA version of the Thunderbird that is getting more and more rare. The Athlon "classic" seems to have a 512k cache and the Athlon Thunderbird a 256k one.

First could anyone confirm this please, and are those the fastest processor available for slotA?

Do you know if there was a version of the Thunderbird for slotA with 512k cache?

Not taking the cache into account wich is faster?  

[legion]

It depends on what your board supports.  my PC has an MSI SlotA board that only supports 1st gen althon's up to 800mhz.  I think other boards may be able to support thunderbirds (spitfire core) up to 1 ghz with a BIOS flash.  Check your mobo manufacturers website.

the most cost effective chip for that board, however, is a 700mhz first gen athlon.  They can be bought for between $20-$30 US  (visit pricewatch.com)

I thought about buying the 700mhz chip (I have a 550) but.. its just $30 more to spend for my XE board  ;-)

You can by an adapter for a couple of quid that you put a socket 370 chip onto, and then it fts into a slot A socket.  I've seen them at computer fairs lots of times

What OS do you use?

[Jose]

Hey. I currently have Win98SE on the thing, manily for Uni stuff. An adapter for socket 370? Wouldn't that require a Bios update or something?
My motherboard is an ASUS K7M, and it supports the 1Ghz processors, I've checket it out. But I still don't know wich would be the fastest processor to put on the thing  :-?

[Hammer]

mdma wrote:
You can by an adapter for a couple of quid that you put a socket 370 chip onto, and then it fts into a slot A socket.  I've seen them at computer fairs lots of times

Would that be “Slot 1” instead of “Slot A”?    

[T_Bone]

mdma wrote:
You can by an adapter for a couple of quid that you put a socket 370 chip onto, and then it fts into a slot A socket.  I've seen them at computer fairs lots of times

I've heard of 370-Slot 1 adapters, but never socketA-slotA.

[JetRacer]

Go for the latest(newer) model. The old probably needs 512KB while the newer deliver the same or better with 256KB. Don't quote me on that though. Check out www.tomshardware.com, they have a search feature.

But honestly, it's a waste of doe when you won't get any satisfying performance anyway. Buy a huge SDRAM-stick and turn off the virtual memory instead (if possible in Win98). You can always recycle the old SDRAM for the A1/Peggy.

[T_Bone]

Prices are damn cheap, I just put together another box for the Den.

Athlon 2500XP  Barton 512kL2 cache 333Mhz bus $170
Microstar (MSI) K7N2 Nforce2 Mobo $90
Western Digital 200GB Hard drive $212
Matrox Parhelia $72
Linksys 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet $34

yeesh! Makes my head swim how cheap everything is!

[mikeymike]

@ T_Bone

I'd change a few things on there if I were you:

 - Seriously, go for a smaller hard drive.  Unless you want to become another statistic regarding victims of high-capacity storage hardware failures.    I'd recommend Seagate, their record is quite good recently, and they make fast, near-silent, not-over-hot drives.

 - The Matrox Parhelia isn't a very good card, except in 2D (as Matrox always is).  I'd recommend a good brand GF4 or a higher-end ATI card.

 - Have you searched the net for user's experiences with that motherboard?  A misbehaving/flaky motherboard is always a good way to ruin one's latest machine upgrade from going nicely.

 - Are you buying a new case for this machine?  I'm having untold problems with airflow because I'm using an old case with a new PSU in it.  If you're using an old case, I'd recommend getting a new one, one of the Nokia-style ones, they have very good airflow and are well-designed.

[T_Bone]

I picked the parhelia because of it's ability to drive a TV and two monitors at the same time, and it's a bargain at $74 . This machine just chills in the den, no games, etc... but I do save movies from my PVN card to that huge Hdd. No important data, etc, just PVN'ed  monies.

The k7n2 is fine as long as you don't plan on running linux
 :-P

[GW]

First could anyone confirm this please, and are those the fastest processor available for slotA?

Probably.

But the question is:

Does your motherboard, or rather chipset, support Slot A Thunderbirds?

The VIA KX133 chipset does not support the Thunderbird CPU.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20000605/t-bird-06.html

Do you know if there was a version of the Thunderbird for slotA with 512k cache?

There is no Thunderbird with 512 kbytes of L2 cache. The original Athlon had 512 kbytes of "off die" L2 cache, i.e. L2 cache on seperate chips. The L2 cache ran, IIRC, at either 50%, 40% or 33% of the CPU core speed. The 500 MHz Athlon had 250 MHz L2 cache while the 1 GHz Athlon had 333 MHz L2 cache.

The Thunderbird has 256 kbytes of "on die" L2 cache. It operates at the same speed as the CPU core, i.e. a 1 GHz Thunderbird has 1 GHz L2 cache. So the cache is smaller but it is also a lot faster and has lower latency than the old "off die" cache.

Barton is the first Athlon with 512 kbytes of "on die" L2 cache.

Not taking the cache into account wich is faster?

You have to take the cache into account since it is a really important part of the CPU.

Anyway.. Thunderbird is faster.

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20000605/t-bird-07.html

socket 370 socket A?  I dunno, it was late at night!  :-)

Re-install windows, install the latest via 4-in-1's (if you have Ironbridge chipset get the 1.30 driver pack form amd.com), gfx card drivers, if you have a sblive, install the kxproject drivers, Install cacheman 5.11, use win98 lite to remove IE, and install phoenix browser, install powertweak to get the best from your hardware.

Or (My preferred solution to get the best from my PC), install gentoo linux from source optimized for you hardware.

[filson]

I've heard of 370-Slot 1 adapters, but never socketA-slotA.

true. afaik it was also only for intel based processors

[filson]

@Jose

You should get a athlon xp. the 2000+ gives biggest bang for your buck. team it up with the ECS K7S5A is a super board that supports both old sdram and ddrram. I'm very pleased with my board, and I know a netcafe with 20 of them running stable. IDE/PCI transfers is also very fast. faster than via. and no soundblaster bugs.