Duron/Thunderbird Update: What, where and when to buy

1. The Asus A7V allows you to overclock the Duron or Thunderbird. See here for details.
2. Speeds of 950Mhz were reached for 650 and 700Mhz Duron, and 1.1Ghz for a 1Ghz Thunderbird.
3. That’s pretty good for the Duron, if 950 proves to be easily reachable, you’d be nuts to build a new system with a Celeron2.
4. Right now, the A7V is the only motherboard that isn’t vaporware we know can do this.
5. There is only one place that is taking advance orders for the A7V (no ETA yet) at tentative prices; Lynn Computer Products. They have a 5.8 rating
   at Reseller Ratings, see comments here. before deciding to purchase. You should also email them to get an idea
   of when they might be able to send you the product.

6. Durons are beginning to show up. However, if you can’t get an overclockable motherboard yet, there’s hardly any point to buying the processor. A few places have 900Mhz Thunderbirds Socket A Thunderbirds already in stock; the rest should come within a couple weeks.
7. What about Slot A Thunderbirds? Well, they’re out there, sometimes, maybe; this is pretty much gray market. However, one very reliable source says that AMD isn’t releasing Slot A Athlons to the general market because they don’t necessarily work quite correctly with some mobos, and the problems aren’t necessarily immediately obvious.
   Resellers can special order them, but are instructed to only use them “on tested mobos.” Just what are “tested mobos?” Have an inquiry out, but if you look here, you find something very odd. AMD lists the following types of Athlon: Slot, Slot^, and PGA. The middle one must be the Slot A Thunderbirds. They have no recommended mobos for these listed yet.

8. I haven’t seen much above 900Mhz in the few Slot A T-Birds I’ve read about with unmodified motherboards.
9. If you don’t have an Athlon motherboard, you probably should wait until the A7V comes out and buy a socket A CPU. I would seriously consider buying a Duron for now and buy a somewhat later model T-bird later.
10. If you do have an Athlon motherboard, you might want to wait a bit until the smoke clears and we have a better idea of what works well with what, and how far you are likely to go with it.

Email Ed