Duron vs TBird

[Johnniest5]

Can someone shed some lights into what's the real difference between a Duron and TBird other than the cache size and bus speed? Looks like I will have to settle for a Duron because my budget is so limited. I used to have a TBird but it chipped so now I'm just trying to come up with enough $$$ for a CPU. I'm thinking of going for a Duron, but still hesistate because something I couldn't really understand fully about the Duron.

Thanks yo'all!

[fireball****aka fireball_87]

the duron is almost exacl\tly the same core digsn as the t-bird except for the cash. although it's not like the celly where it's just a pIII(or t-bird) with some of the cash disabled, the cash isint there.

[tim]

The other term is Price/performance, you pay much less for Duron than Tbird and get only 7% less performance on Duron. $60 for 800mhz Duron vs $100 800mhz Tbird. A 1G Durron has the same performance as 900mhz or more likely 950mhz Tbird. Beside, the duron is likely more overclockable. Have fun with whatever CPU you choose. I was an ex-Intell till last month. And now have so much fun With the price/performance winners, AMP processors. At least, till Intel comes up with something more interesting for OCERS.. My 800 Duron @ 145x7=1015mhz is rocks solid, very fast... while my legacy Abit BP6, 2 366@583mhz Celeron 1, with Win 2000 install is the best budget Dual system I ever owned. So cheap for so much fun, the dual Celeron 1. Untill then, the Palominos. Bye Intel and Tbirds.... for me.

[tim]

The other term is Price/performance, you pay much less for Duron than Tbird and get only 7% less performance on Duron. $60 for 800mhz Duron vs $100 800mhz Tbird. A 1G Durron has the same performance as 900mhz or more likely 950mhz Tbird. Beside, the duron is likely more overclockable. Have fun with whatever CPU you choose. I was an ex-Intell till last month. And now have so much fun With the price/performance winners, AMP processors. At least, till Intel comes up with something more interesting for OCERS.. My 800 Duron @ 145x7=1015mhz is rocks solid, very fast... while my legacy Abit BP6, 2 366@583mhz Celeron 1, with Win 2000 install is the best budget Dual system I ever owned. So cheap for so much fun, the dual Celeron 1. Untill then, the Palominos. Bye Intel and Tbirds.... for me.

[tim]

The other term is Price/performance, you pay much less for Duron than Tbird and get only 7% less performance on Duron. $60 for 800mhz Duron vs $100 800mhz Tbird. A 1G Durron has the same performance as 900mhz or more likely 950mhz Tbird. Beside, the duron is likely more overclockable. Have fun with whatever CPU you choose. I was an ex-Intell till last month. And now have so much fun With the price/performance winners, AMP processors. At least, till Intel comes up with something more interesting for OCERS.. My 800 Duron @ 145x7=1015mhz is rocks solid, very fast... while my legacy Abit BP6, 2 366@583mhz Celeron 1, with Win 2000 install is the best budget Dual system I ever owned. So cheap for so much fun, the dual Celeron 1. Untill then, the Palominos. Bye Intel and Tbirds.... for me.

[Hoot]

Get the 600 Duron. They love to be overclocked and for $40.00, there is no better bang for buck. Mine does 10x100 @ 1.85V (KT-133), or 8x137 @ 2.0V (KT-133A).

Hoot

[fireball****aka fireball_87]

tim (Apr 09, 2001 11:49 a.m.):
The other term is Price/performance, you pay much less for Duron than Tbird and get only 7% less performance on Duron. $60 for 800mhz Duron vs $100 800mhz Tbird. A 1G Durron has the same performance as 900mhz or more likely 950mhz Tbird. Beside, the duron is likely more overclockable. Have fun with whatever CPU you choose. I was an ex-Intell till last month. And now have so much fun With the price/performance winners, AMP processors. At least, till Intel comes up with something more interesting for OCERS.. My 800 Duron @ 145x7=1015mhz is rocks solid, very fast... while my legacy Abit BP6, 2 366@583mhz Celeron 1, with Win 2000 install is the best budget Dual system I ever owned. So cheap for so much fun, the dual Celeron 1. Untill then, the Palominos. Bye Intel and Tbirds.... for me.

wow! tripple post!

[Johnniest5]

I would assume that to OC a Duron, the same unlocking method applies, correct? Other than that, I should just OC the multiplier and NOT the FSB, correct? I'm the unluckiest person, I think. I went from an Intel PII 300 to Athlon 1.2 Ghz 266 FSB all the way back down to Duron 600 (or atleast I'm thinking of going that route). Wow, what a trip. But I'm still pissed off at my 1.2 Ghz that was chipped by the stupid super orb. ThermalTake haven't reply to my complaint yet. Maybe they will never.

[Johnniest5]

One more thing, can a Duron play DVD movie smoothly without using a MPEG card? Or does that job belong to the graphics card? I'm thinking of getting the Leadtek GF2MX SH MAX with the new MX400 chip. Anybody have any knowledge about this new chip from NVidia? Is it faster than the plain MX?

[fireball****aka fireball_87]

Johnniest5 (Apr 09, 2001 01:16 p.m.):
I would assume that to OC a Duron, the same unlocking method applies, correct? Other than that, I should just OC the multiplier and NOT the FSB, correct? I'm the unluckiest person, I think. I went from an Intel PII 300 to Athlon 1.2 Ghz 266 FSB all the way back down to Duron 600 (or atleast I'm thinking of going that route). Wow, what a trip. But I'm still pissed off at my 1.2 Ghz that was chipped by the stupid super orb. ThermalTake haven't reply to my complaint yet. Maybe they will never.

a: yes the same meathod aplyes, B: why dont you rma it from amd? and c:thermal take sux for colling perion ;D

[fireball****aka fireball_87]

Johnniest5 (Apr 09, 2001 01:19 p.m.):
One more thing, can a Duron play DVD movie smoothly without using a MPEG card? Or does that job belong to the graphics card? I'm thinking of getting the Leadtek GF2MX SH MAX with the new MX400 chip. Anybody have any knowledge about this new chip from NVidia? Is it faster than the plain MX?

yes, yes, and yes it's 200mhz instad of 175 ;D

[DE]

Overclock the FSB first in my opinion. I have my Tbird 750 running at 150 (300) fsb bus with no problems on a epox 8kta3 board. As long as you have ok Ram. It runs fine at 1 gig with a volcano ii and will run at 1200 with a pep66, yours may not do the same speeds but you get the point. I got this Tbird for $72 but if I were going to buy again I'd get a duron 700 for $45 and spend the rest on better cooling.

Johnniest5 (Apr 09, 2001 01:16 p.m.):
I would assume that to OC a Duron, the same unlocking method applies, correct? Other than that, I should just OC the multiplier and NOT the FSB, correct? I'm the unluckiest person, I think. I went from an Intel PII 300 to Athlon 1.2 Ghz 266 FSB all the way back down to Duron 600 (or atleast I'm thinking of going that route). Wow, what a trip. But I'm still pissed off at my 1.2 Ghz that was chipped by the stupid super orb. ThermalTake haven't reply to my complaint yet. Maybe they will never.

[Thelemac]

Johnniest5 (Apr 09, 2001 08:43 a.m.):
Can someone shed some lights into what's the real difference between a Duron and TBird other than the cache size and bus speed? Looks like I will have to settle for a Duron because my budget is so limited. I used to have a TBird but it chipped so now I'm just trying to come up with enough $$$ for a CPU. I'm thinking of going for a Duron, but still hesistate because something I couldn't really understand fully about the Duron.

Thanks yo'all!

Bus speed is actually 100Mhz, which is the same as most Athlons.

Also

[tim]

Before I got the 800 Duron, I had a 650 Duron, green core, which maxed out at 145x6=870mhz. Full load with Prime95, Heavyload, burnin test, My eyes poped out looking at the rising temp of the CPU, sometimes close to 53C. Returned that 650 Duron, got a 800mhz Duron, blue core, up to 145x7=1015mhz with ease. But the beauty is the temp. The CPU at idle is 26-28C, full load with prime95 never get higher than 40C with the same cooling like before with that 650 Duron. What a beauty, the blue core Duron.

[Nagorak]

Duron is not worth the money IMO. Sure in common desktop apps it runs just as fast as an equally clocked Athlon, but as soon as you start playing games the Duron's lack of cache begins to show. A 900 MHz Duron cannot even outperform a 700 MHz Athlon in some games. It's got the horse power, it just doesn't have the cache to feed it. If you plan on gaming AT ALL, I'd suggest just going with a cheap Athlon and overclocking it as far as it will go.

[diehrd]

No way the DURON can keep pace with an ATHLON.

If you under stand how the system uses information,Yow will see the old Slot A can out perform the DURON !!!!!!

The cache, for easy understanding is like RAM.

It stores info that your processor will use when you are performing a task.

Duron 64k on die cache SLOT A 512k Off die cache
Socket Athlon 256 on die cache.

Now the socket styles use full processor speed with the cache,The first generation Athlon used a max speed of like 400Mhz to its cache.

But almost all software is made to use the processor and its cache as much as possible,Because RAm is a lot slower than the cache,Your fsb cannot come close to the speed of the cache,Even the classic Slot is way faster than any FSB.

I have had the slot a,,,The duron,,,and now the 1.2 athlon....

MY SLOT A 750 was faster than the 750 DURON.
If you understand the way a system works you willl see why a slot a can out perform a DURON.In laymans terms here is why.

Slot a big cache 512k,will use this before allocating it to ram,Con off die, max transfer rate 400Mhz

Duron small 64k cache full speed transfer rate,con anything over 64k needs to be held in ram,were fsb will slow her down to transfer rates BELOW the SLOT A processor.

I have had the Duron The Slot a Athlon and the socket Athlon.
The duron when running video editing software,web Graphics softwere,was slower my duron was a 750 my SLOT WAS 750,

My Athlon 1.2 at 150x9 obviously crushes them easly.however a 750 T-Bird will also crush a 750 Duron and a 750 Slot a.

So the bird is a way better performer,Personally I would rather have a Slot A over a duron may not O/C as high but stock for stock the duron is not a work horse !!!!!

[thelmores]

the post starter is on budget, therefore the duron is choice. if he had asked which is best performer, then tbird.
thats not what he asked!

but i will say this, my duron and geforce2 mx gets 5750 in 3dmark 2000, which is PLENTY fast enough for gaming (for the above posts)!

duron800 @1035

[Johnniest5]

Thank you all for shedding some lights into my brain. I think I'm going to get an Athlon TBird 850 Mhz even though I want a faster CPU, my budget is somewhat limited at this time. That is the only TBird line that costs less than a hundred dollars so that's gonna be my next option.

Then I'm going to get a Leadtek GF2MX SH MAX with 64 MB SDRAM and the newer MX400. What do you guys think of that?

Have any of you actually test the MX400 out yet? If someone has, I would really appreciate it if you could share your story with the rest of us.

Thanks alot!

[jr]

I have a 650 duron that I run at 1021 at 1.85v. It is running 158fsb cas 2 trubo on my iwill kk266r and I can honestly say this cpu is just as fast as my p3 at 1150 I had. I was going to buy a 1gig axia tbird for this combo but I think I am going to hold out for the palomino and get a couple of harddrives. I get the same or faster fps in q3 and all games. This Duron is great. If you are going for the tbird I would wait and save money for a 1gig 266 bus axia because you can get them to around 1.4 1.5 gig supposedly but you wont be disappointed if you get a Duron for the time being. I would get the Duron and wait for the Palomino.