Your honest comments please - PIII or Athlon?

Well I'm about to build an Athlon system. I'm prob. gonna go with an 850 or 900 CPU and the ABIT KA7-100 mobo. Now I would like to ask about memory, I was looking at getting PC-133 dual 128mb SDRAM. This should do the trick right? I will be getting a 300 or 350 watt power supply just to make sure the system runs ok. I heard in a PC Gamer and some websites how the Power made a big diff. in most Athlon systems. And that some Micron memory modules are kinda buggy. I don't know if that's true or if it was just the early K7 chipsets at the time doing this. But I'd like to know what any Tech would recommend as far as mem is concerned. Any other comments would be greatly appreciated to further help me with my dissicion for hardware. I will have both Win2k and WinME (when it releases). I'll have a GeForce2 GTS 32MB for my video. I can't seem to decide on a sound card though, can you guys post your comments? I was thinking about either the SB LIVE, Diamond MX400 or the Aureal Vortex2.

[This message has been edited by hive-mind (edited June 28, 2000).]

Hive mind....

As for the sound card I would recommend either the SB Live or the MX300 from Diamond. I have the MX300 and wouldn't trade it for the world.. I have read the reviews of the MX400 (seeing that it Just came out when I got my 300) and every one of them said the same thing.... the MX300 kicks the MX400 in the BUTT... as for the memory problems... I have not heard of any Micron memory having problems... I would def get the best and the fastest...


OHHH YEAH BTW AMD ALL THE WAY!!! Nice to see the underdog kick some BUTT!!!!!

[This message has been edited by Spitfire650 (edited June 28, 2000).]

I've worked with both AMD Athlon 650 and 700's. I had no trouble with setup at all.
I've used Microstar MS7195 motherboards and setup was very easy. For price and quality the Athlon chips ran extremely well.

I beg to differ about your comment. Again, I was wondering which CPU to go for, but I went for the AMD Athlon 700 becuae it was cheaper (about £150 - 200 cheaper!). I found it VERY EASY to build the system, and I have no problems. The system booted first time, and I know that hte AMD Athlon will out preform a simialer setup with a PIII 700...
Overall, I am very happy with my system.

Have someone ever work with PCChips MB
for Athlon (with sound on-board and modem).
Please,share with information about.

Sure, go for the AMD. Then make sure your old AOL account is still loaded on the P75 you just retired. You'll need it to post on this forum. Why? When your new spiffy Athlon system is locking up in a sea of blue screens and a desert of illegal operation errors, you'll need help to work out all the conflicts and download all the updated device drivers.

AMD = Always Malfunctions Daily.

Ribbon Cable> Obviously the words of a high school drop out that can't figure out how to install his RAM and get his video card installed under windows 95.

BTW, the CPU goes in the segregated slot on the mainboard. Not the one that says "SIMM 0" beside it.

What is this rubbish about AMD's not running software they are 100% Compatible, AMD bought the rights to the 386 processor ! there is no issue with software I have used AMD's from their 486's throught the k5 and K6,K6-2,K6-3 and the now the Athlon. The K6's couldn't hold a candle to a pentium in games because of the FPU but now that problem is fixed and now better than Intel's offering people try and claim they have compatability problems like Cyrix processors ! They aren't ! AMD have no issue's with software. Oh yeah and the comment about Athlon's being harder to setup is load of rubbish too. I bet all you Intel lovers are using VIA chipsets because of Caminogate ! The Athlon VIA chipset is practically identical. Memory, IDE and the AGP controller are all the same ! Please people just admit that the Athlon is king for now.

The new T-Bird and Duron are both very impressive. I'm a little surprised that AMD didn't deliver a bigger "final death blow" to Intel by making the T-Bird with a full 512K of full-speed cache and the Duron with 256K of the same. Then you couldn't even put the benchmarks on the same screen. Intel has been floundering lately; the latest "castrated" Celeron chips (with half the cache disabled) is a great example of the kind of convoluted thinking over there. (reminds me of the 486SX with present but disabled math coprocessor. You do not handicap one of your products just to make another one look good unless you are really pathetic. Intel has become pathetic.) Intel hasn't really come up with an innovative new processor design since the Pentium Pro.

I can't wait for them to make a dual Duron board. With Win2K's SMP feature, I'll be building myself a small supercomputer with over 1 GHz of processing power, really cheap! If they just get around to that Dual Socket A solution SOON.....

My advice is to buy an AMD from a company that is by far the new market leader in R&D and innovation. Intel has been sucking rocks for too long.

I used Amd for 2 years no problems. I even overclocked them with excellent results. Recently I built myself a Pent II 300 mhz (SL2W8 oc'd to 504 mhz) I'm well satified with this as well as the Amd systems I used to own. This system does however outperform my previous (K62 400 oc'd to 475).

Mobo selection I feel is very important.(I am using an Abit BE6 Rev 2) What good is a 800 mhz system if you bottleneck it with a cheap board.

PC CHIPS are junk. Stay away from them. go with gigabyte, MSI, or even ABIT.

Read the RMA topic in the TECH TO TECH and see all the posts....

I recently built an Athlon system w/700 cpu using an Abit KA7-66 mobo w/Kingmax pc133, cas2 memory at 128mbs. I had trouble with the Aureal sound card, so I got a Soundblaster Live and vouille' it works great. With the Abit mobo the bios does everything for you from fsb settings to voltage settings and doing the laundry if you sweettalk it!!!

I recently built an Athlon for myself. No problems whatsoever. So amazingly smoothe. I've never owned owned an intel chip but I worked for a computer shop that was nothing but intel. Intel networking and processors and mainboards OH MY!! I'll admit, Intel stuff is great but not worth the extra money. And Ribbon Cable, is that your opinion about the Athlon or someone else's? Sounds like someone else's.

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Tony

I can understand that sometime when people get burned by a bad product, they swear off of it. Ribbon Cable, have you ever even built an athlon system?

First build one, and then state any problems..... and we'll see which are actual hardware and which are user problems.

If you are going to make such a bold statement, have some facts to back them up.

It sounds to me that Ribbon Cable is one of those so call "techs" who replaces a card because he thinks that it bad and never tries to figure out the real problem was. I have work with system that used Intel, Cyrix and Amd. The Celeron is just a water down version of a pentiumn, just like the 386sx was a water down version of a 386. As far the programs not running on an Amd, I have never had any problems with any of them (windows 98, Office 2000, Netzero, etc.). I think blue ribbon has been on the intel site far to long. Wake up and see the light, Amd gives you more for your money.

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Originally posted by cki tech:
I can understand that sometime when people get burned by a bad product, they swear off of it. Ribbon Cable, have you ever even built an athlon system?

First build one, and then state any problems..... and we'll see which are actual hardware and which are user problems.

If you are going to make such a bold statement, have some facts to back them up.

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