Athlon or Coppermine?

Hecate

I'll be ordering the parts for a new uber-l33t machine from overclockers uk in about 2 months and its come down to two choices:

Coppermine 866 or 900mhz Athlon

They will be used primarily for games, of course

Gerry

Or you could just buy a p3 600 or 650 and clock it to 866. I would recommend the p3 866 it will be faster for games and just about everything else. You will have less compatibility and setup probs with the coppermine setup also. Everything else being equal in the machine, the p3 is much faster in games like quake3. I have had very few problems setting up my machine. Let me know if you want more details

Kali

i'd agree.
you wont be overclocking either of them at that speed, and the 866 is already on a 133 fsb.
whatevers cheaper and has a nicer monitor.
or else go for the 866.

(why why why do people ask these questions?)

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Hecate

I think you misunderstood

The Athlon 900 is a 750mhz chip that has been modified by AMD themselves and sold through ocuk.

The Coppermine has been tested at 866mhz and they recommend cooling setups etc. based on those tests. (you can get a refund or exchange if either chip doesnt work/or go to the specified speed)

A complete system with either chip wont cost much over IR£1000 (thats including vat and shipping)

Just asking which is the better choice, not for alternatives

Gerry

Right, get the p3, case closed

amp

Originally posted by Gerry:
You will have less compatibility and setup probs with the coppermine setup also.

Well the rest may be true but I disagree with this bit. I've not had 1 compatibility problem. Early K6's maybe but not the K7.

Ohh apart from not being able to get into Intels "Weboutfitter". Shame

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Stephen

Originally posted by amp:
Ohh apart from not being able to get into Intels "Weboutfitter". Shame

What the hell is that anyway?

_CreeD_

The only compatibility problem i have is with the Geforce and AGP2x, and that was solved with later revs of the AMD750 chipset.

The PIII is faster for games at the mo ( not by much, Q3 excepted), but the Athlon is still superior for plain old number crunching. If you do a lot of rendering or MP3 compressing etc. it's a better option, and cheaper.
But I'd wait and get the TBird if I were you (since you'll be waiting that long anyway). You can be sure OCUK will have 'special' Tbirds a month or so after they appear.

Gerry

Amp, you must be one of the lucky ones. A friend of mine has an athlon. It was a few months before it ran perfectly stable

Kali

they obviously need a few weeks to get used to their new surroundings and make new friends with mrs. motherboard and mr. power supply.

Gerry

That, and trying every combination of settings, patches, bios upgrades, and drivers was sufficient

Hecate

I think most of these people who have Athlon horror stories didnt get the right motherboard/ram with it.

Athlon's are very picky about the hardware they work with, as long as you get the right stuff it'll fly.

Jelvon

what would you recommend then as right mobo and ram for a athlon cpu?

sutty

Gerry was that me?

sutty

Gerry was that me?
also I'd get the T-Bird, They are putting out 1.5Gz cpu's in June 5th......ssssssssssswwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttt.......uummmmmmm

_CreeD_

The biggest problems were with the Asus K7, but they were solved with BIOS releases ages ago.
Besides, what do you expect. It was the first chipset/Cpu release for the Athlon. And It's had less problems than the I820. You're comparing stability back then to the BX chipset which had been around for nigh on 2 years (And was just a bit of an enhancement over the older Intel chipsets, not a whole now design).

I'm not being vendor Biased, but I like Athlons. When any teething problems are done with, they're MUCH more stable than Intel CPU's. Since I've had mine it feels more like Im running NT than 98.

Kali

"feels more like NT than 98"
in my experience blue screens are a lot more common on NT workstations than 98 .. and NT boxs are a lot slower.
so if thats what athlons feel like

sutty.. i cant see 1.5GHz Thunderbirds being available at their launch, only from 700MHz to 1GHz.
VIA are demoing a 1.4GHz Kyro Athlon machine (from aceshardware), why do that if a 1.5Ghz Thunderbird is out in two weeks?
im thinking anything above 1GHz will be requiring a Socket A mboard, and they wont be produced in any quantity till Q4 at least:
http://www.aceshardware.com/#N644

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_CreeD_

Then ya just aint installin' it right matey....

Abit are apparently working on a Slot converter already for SocketA-SlotA.

SlotA Tbirds are rumoured to be OEM only.

Kali

rumors, thats one thing i dont like about amd, their site is just absolutely dire. no concrete information at all.
tried to find some facts about the duron, all they have is a press release and a FAQ.
no figures at all.

anyway "apparantly" slot A tbirds will only be made in q3, after that they will all be socket A... which is probably why they're working on that convertor, that and the fact that amd seem to very stringent on what constitutes a compatible socket a board

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