Slot A K7. Are they still "Athlons," or T-Birds in Slot A form factor?

[klosters64a]

Could someone please tell me if Slot A Athlons are still the big clunkers with two external L2 cache chips? Or are they like Slot 1 PIIIE's are now--PIIIE Coppermines stuck on a Slot 1 form factor SECC2 PCB? Thanks!

[Nick Fury]

Slot A Athlons are the big black boxed ****ers and socket A Athlons are small thin squares like Celerons.

[stool]

The slot A Athlons are the big clunkers. There are, however some slot A T-Birds, so you will have to check carefully before grabbing one. I haven't personally seen a slot A T-Bird, but they can be found on Pricewatch.

[Big Mike]

They still sell both the "classic" is the clunky bastitch with the cache chips on the PCB, the tbird slot a is basically a socket A chip attatched to a PCB

[defectiv]

Yep, they sell them, i've got a SlotA T-bird 950.
Can't say i'm glad i've bought it though, it's really hard to
get a mobo that runs em stable!. I returned 3 boards before getting one that ran it! (Asus K7M - No way.. and 3 K7V-T's, last one was okay).
Those mobo's have no temp.monitor included. (they do have a connector, but no sensor).
Only thing that's nice about slot a is that you can easily fit 2 or 3 fans on it :)
But if i'd buy one now, i'd get a socket...

[klosters64a]

Thanks for your replies everyone! The only reason I'm investigating Slot A's is because I'm wary of VIA chipsets, and AFAIK, AMD 750's are not found on Socket A mainboards. I've had two MVP3's(admittedly NOT KT/KTA/KM's) and they've been APITA. I don't think VIA will ever iron out the bugs in its present, much less future chipsets.

There were simply too many brand new chipsets introduced over the last ~18 months. Even Intel can't get them right anymore. While the i815's are stable, and their FSB's are OCable to the moon, they still don't perform as well as the olde 440BX, memory-wise.

I should be asking: Is the AMD 750 chipset a solid performer? I dunno, candidly. While Durons/T-birds/Athlons are the best value PCing mankind has ever seen, the "~~certified stable" mainboards for them are expensive, and they usually need a brand new, expensive PS. The same applies to SDRAM. Yes, generic Ram is cheap--but the Athlon family seems to accept only Infineon and even more expensive DIMM's.

I know, bitch, bitch, bitch! More elucidation on all things AMD 750 gladly solicited. Thanks!

[Big Mike]

I'd go for a socket A A7V-133 or the new KT7A, they're based on the KT133A chipset, and franky, Irongate (AMD 750) sucks. While these boards have quirks they're pretty far along in the BIOS revisions and are getting much better, AMD 760 based boards would also be good but they require DDR ram etc. AMD 750 isnt being used much because its not a very good chipset and KT133 took off much better even with the bumps in the road.

[Pat]

Have a Slot A 6195 MSI board that is very stable. I orginally ordered Soya M/B with Via 133, but it would not work correctly. I stepped down to the MSI & it never crashed!

[Rob Cork]

Never had any probs with the via chipset here, just things like cpus not going fast enough or graphics cards not ocing enough... but I think it'd be unfair to blame that on the KT133 :-)