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Athlon Stability (1 Viewer)

Samuel Des

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Feb 7, 2001
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Is Athlon still a viable solution when considering stability alone? I'm building a box for my brother, and am looking for CPU/Motherboard recipes. (I'm not worried about periphreal cards.) The OS will likely be XP.

Edit - I mean the Athlon XP 1---+ CPUs, e.g., 1500+, &c. The MB should be able to accept up to 1GB RAM.
 

Jeff Blair

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Apr 30, 2000
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I just built a system with a XP1800+, and I haven't heard of any problems. I think AMD would be a good way to go. I have used them for years now with no problems. I would go with them, as you get more bang for the buck. In some cases AMD out does Intel. Good luck in building your system.
 

JasenP

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I went with an AMD 1700+ (overclocked to 1.5ghz) because the cost was much less than a Pentium without sacrificing performance or stability. I can't really see any sense with going with an overpriced Pentium Processor anymore.
To give you an idea of a price difference (from NewEgg):
INTEL PENTIUM 4 2.0GHz = $430.00
AMD Athlon MP 2000+ 1.67GHz = $275.00
Check out
Tom's Hardware for a lot more good information.
 

Jeff Blair

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There are a couple of things that could stop you from getting a dual XP mother board. First, XP Home does not support multi CPU's. The other thing is what programs is he going to be running? A lot of programs don't take full advantage of the dual CPU set up. Most games, and things of that nature don't. Now most vidio and some photo editing software will use both CPU's. Check it out before you go and get one. Just my 2 cents.
 

David_Stein

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some thoughts:

a) xp home is the devils work. if you arent using at least professional or win2k then you really arent worrying about stability

b) he doesnt necessarily have to use both sockets. i was just pointing out those motherboards (and the amd mpx chipset) as a board/chipset that is built for stability, rather than straight up performance/tweaking options.

c) upgrade possibilities. yumm
 

Samuel Des

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Hey, thanks! :) He will use it mostly for word processing and some multimedia stuff, like photos and such. He will not need dual processors. XP Pro will be the way to go, OS-wise.
I guess the main reason why I was worried is that I heard that, unless you feed it with a lot of RAM, Athlon based systems can be less stable under Windows NT/XP.
I think I will wait till April when the Via 333 chipset comes out.
 

David_Stein

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if thats he's going to be doing with it, anything would do. buy the lowend dell or an older model imac, that way you dont have to worry about doing the tech support for him
 

Samuel Des

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Yeah, I was thinking that, but I wanted to give something nice. :) Something a little beyond the propetary solutions. Dell makes good stuff, but from what I've read, you can't use the case with different motherboards.
 

David_Stein

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i doubt they can either, but if you can still get a p3 1ghz from dell *dont even know if tahts possible) then that will allow him to do all the work processing and photo manipulating (as long as they arent 50mb files of course) he wants for a good long time...
 

Carlo_M

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Athlons and AMD are fine, reliability-wise.

It's VIA chipsets that are the problem. And they are on a good number of Athlon motherboards.

Most people have VIA chipsets and are fine with them. However most of the problems you read about in newsgroups, etc. stem from them. I've had a bum one that I keep limping along for over a year now. Saving up money to go P4 Northwood / RDRAM though, and kiss VIA goodbye!
 

Steven Hen

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Feb 26, 2002
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I've been all AMD since giving my wife my old P3 500. I have the old slot Athlon 750, duron 750, Thunderbird 900, TB 1.2 266, XP1600+ and just installed a new XP2000+ tonight. I never have had any stability problems with any of these processors, well not sure about the XP2000+ since I've only had it up and running for about an hour now. I've overclocked all these chips and they run great. I have absolutely no interest in Intel and will remain a loyal AMD fan!
 

Michael Silla

Second Unit
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Jul 27, 2001
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313
I have had both AMD and Intel in my generic box. To me, AMD is offering the better comprimise between price and performance. Perhaps in the not too distance future that situation may change.

Samuel,

"I guess the main reason why I was worried is that I heard that, unless you feed it with a lot of RAM, Athlon based systems can be less stable under Windows NT/XP."

Where have you heard this?. What explanation was given for this phenomenon?. I have never experienced this with my current Athlon setup (1.2 TB 266 on EPoX 8KHA+). As for Carlos's comments on VIA setups I partially agree. My old Abit via based board had it's set of problems. This new EPoX KT266A board has run without a hitch.

Michael
 

Jeff Blair

Second Unit
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Apr 30, 2000
Messages
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One other thing, talking of RAM, that you need to think of. Only the newest MoBo's for Intel will support DDR ram. Everything else for the P4's is Rambus. Rambus is about twice as much as DDR. Just something to think about.
 

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