The Quickest Guide to AMD Processors…Ever.

4 Nov, 2004 at 10:27pm ET Article published in Tech

\”What Athlon do I buy?\” To begin to answer that question here is a compiled list of all the current platforms and brief outlines for each including my personal recommendations for what\’s hot and what\’s not.

Read it here

Comments

4 Nov 2004 ~ 10:50pm Cygnus_x_1 EXCELLENT write up....

quick, and to the point...
4 Nov 2004 ~ 10:51pm MediaMan It's all Thrax's work this time.
5 Nov 2004 ~ 12:02am Unregistered The subject interrest me. Is it possible to add the Athlon XP M in the review ?. (I hope desktop PC will support this kind of CPU in a near future, in order to reduce power used).
5 Nov 2004 ~ 12:48am Thrax The Athlon XP-M is already desktop-compatible. It can be used on any Socket A motherboard.
5 Nov 2004 ~ 4:53am deicist do socket 940 chipsets still need registered RAM? If so that could do with mentioning as it bumps up the cost of a system and has performance implications...

Other than that a good write up, concise and informative
5 Nov 2004 ~ 5:00am Thrax Yes, it requires registered memory. Good thought!

10. Unique to the Opteron platform is the necessity for registered memory. Such memory comes at a price-premium and has a minor performance impact. However, the stability of the Opteron-based system due to data parity and a more rigorous QC process on most registered DIMMs offsets the price gains and slight performance loss.
5 Nov 2004 ~ 7:41am Omega65 Nice Guide. You might want to add the Abit KV8 Pro and the AV8 to the Socket 754 & 939 mobo choices as an alternative to the DFI.

Xbit Labs Sempron 3100+ Overclocking

pg14 As for the gain you receive by overclocking the Sempron 3100+, we enjoyed a performance growth of about 25% by clocking our sample at 2.52GHz (40% frequency boost). Thanks to that, the overclocked Sempron 3100+ could outperform the Pentium 4 3.4GHz as well as the Athlon 64 3400+ by about 5% in average.
5 Nov 2004 ~ 8:01am Unregistered You forgot to mention the mobile athlon XPs, mobile Athlon 64 and the Athlon 64 DTR.
5 Nov 2004 ~ 8:46am deicist The DTR is mentioned under the socket 754 Athlon 64s, the mobile athlon XPs (as far as I know) are just pre-selected Bartons with the clock stepping enabled. Could do with mentioning that under the Athlon XP section I guess...

dunno about the mobile A64s though...
5 Nov 2004 ~ 9:16am floppybootstomp Excellent guide Thrax, gets to the meat of the matter without being overblown.

Only thing that made me think a little was choice of motherboard for Socket A. I think I'd take the DFI NFII Ultra B over the Abit NF7-S 2.0, but that's just me
5 Nov 2004 ~ 9:41am CyrixInstead Yep, brilliant guide Thrax.

I was soon to be building a system with the Duron and it's a long time since I've seen any info abot it, but looks like I'll wait a bit now...

BTW ever thought about becoming a journalist & writing guides for a living??

~Cyrix
5 Nov 2004 ~ 11:35am Unregistered Great article! I'm interested to know where the DDR2 comment comes from? Has any chipset vendor said they're interested in moving from DDR? Or is it simply inevitable?
5 Nov 2004 ~ 12:25pm Deicist It's pretty much inevitable, DDR2 (in theory at least) offers much higher speeds than DDR and both intel & AMD (well, VIA & nvidia) have committed to moving to the new standard in future chipsets. Currently though DDR2 isn't really offering much above and beyond DDR, it's more what it's expected to offer in future that has people excited.
5 Nov 2004 ~ 3:26pm Thrax

CyrixInstead wrote:

Yep, brilliant guide Thrax.

I was soon to be building a system with the Duron and it's a long time since I've seen any info abot it, but looks like I'll wait a bit now...

BTW ever thought about becoming a journalist & writing guides for a living??

~Cyrix

I have, but I've never seen something even remotely close to an opportunity regarding it. That would actually be my dream job.
6 Nov 2004 ~ 12:58pm Unregistered Couple of comments:

- Since you mention SMP, you should include the Athlon MP - the only Socket A SMP supported

- What about the Socket 940 Athlon64 FX? It should be noted that the only difference between Opteron 1xx and FX-5x (e.g. Opteron-150 / FX-53) is the unlocked CPU multiplier.

- The 64-bit CPUs (Athlon 64, FX, Opteron) all support 16-bit protected mode execution state, if Micro$oft doesn't want to support it w/ the LoseDoze XP 64-bit Edition.
7 Nov 2004 ~ 12:22am Unregistered One quick note all semprons have 256k l2 cache http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_11599_11604,00.html for reference as does the fact i've used the 2200 and 2400 in systems and they both definetely have 256k l2
7 Nov 2004 ~ 10:09am Unregistered There are a couple of mistakes in the socket A Sempron section.

1. All Sempron socket A processors have 256Kb L2 cache except:-
2. The 3000+ which has 512Kb L2 and is not mentioned.
3. The 3000+ is a Barton core (2000MHz/512Kb/33Mhz).

[url=]http://139.95.253.213/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE/,/?St=36,E=0000000000181574915,K=7205,Sxi=3,Case=obj(5080)[/url]

Aussie
7 Nov 2004 ~ 5:57pm Unregistered Your commentary is excellent - maybe you could modify the article and do the comparison of various processors using a table? That's a quick and easy way to summarize the parameters under scrutiny.
8 Nov 2004 ~ 1:51am Thrax Here's to hoping the higher ups make the necessary corrections!
9 Nov 2004 ~ 7:08am Micks 109 That was great article Thrax
i have already built two systems. your article will be helpful when i next build a system
19 Nov 2004 ~ 5:56am Spinner Great job Thrax!
28 Nov 2004 ~ 12:44pm Unregistered Good clear information...... just waht the Doctor requested.

Thanks

Teek
29 Nov 2004 ~ 3:37am Unregistered As some viewers already have pointed out, all Semprons have a 256 kB L2 cache.

- Tapio Nuutinen
4 Dec 2004 ~ 12:34am Unregistered

8. Best motherboard to date? Arguably, the Tyan Thunder K8W (S2885). Supporting:

Up to two AMD Opteron™ processors
Eight 184-pin 2.5V DDR DIMM sockets for up to 16GB (400/333/266/200)
Four 64-bit (3.3V) PCI-X slots; one 8X AGP / AGP Pro110 slot
One GbE LAN controller; integrated FireWire controller
Serial ATA controller (option); integrated audio
SSI EEB v3.0 footprint (12"x13"; 304.8x330.2mm)
Tyan has positioned itself, yet again, as a world-class provider of quality enterprise/workstation products. This motherboard makes my heart race.

I'm not sure if IWill's DK8N was out when this was writted but it's the best dual opteron board around a step below the new boards with PCI-E.
12 Dec 2004 ~ 8:51am Unregistered one hell of *good* information on one page
*bowing before the author*
29 Dec 2004 ~ 12:26am Unregistered Hey would an athlon xp-m 1500+ work in a socket a motherboard? or do only the newer xp-m's work on socket a boards?

thanks,
-Ryan
29 Dec 2004 ~ 2:09am Thrax It'd work.
11 Jan 2005 ~ 3:15pm Unregistered would the amd sempron run on my socket a motherboard running at 266 mhz fsb
30 Mar 2005 ~ 4:33pm Unregistered 'Tyan has positioned itself, yet again, as a world-class provider of quality enterprise/workstation products. This motherboard makes my heart race.'

Seen the k8we. Yowza. Great page, btw.
23 Apr 2005 ~ 3:42pm Unregistered hello
27 Apr 2005 ~ 7:46pm Unregistered Just a note of thanks. I now have the info needed. AMD's site was a waste of time.
27 Apr 2005 ~ 10:24pm csimon I'd like to see the venice and san diego cores added as well as the multi-cores.
Great job Th rax!
27 Apr 2005 ~ 10:27pm Thrax They're being added. I started updating the article last week.. I'll finish it soon.
10 Mar 2009 ~ 4:38pm John Smith If i buy an AMD processor, will software that says it needs INTEL PROCESSORS work still??
10 Mar 2009 ~ 4:40pm BuddyJ Yes.