What's the Duron like then ?

[Darren Wilson]

I agree Dr Cool.

I wish I could get hold of the Abit boards but my boss is careful with his money and wants to use the cheapest available. After this week (he has been away on holiday) I think he may change his mind

I have spent the best part of a week on the Athlon and the whole of today on teh Duron and the more I think about it the more I copnclude that it is a mobo incompatiability. I know that the ATI cards are definatly incompatiable (the Rage Fury Maxx) with the VIA KX/KT133 chipset as I have been told this by ATI themselves. The others do not make sense at all. Maybe it is an AGP power problem like the original TNT cards on LX boards. The more I write the more I am now thinking of this power problem so I may contridict myslef a couple of times in teh same post, as this is the way I think. It is very strange though how I get told by my supplier that they build identical systems and have no problems?? I think I am being told a blag here. Oh sod it. I am going to build Intel systems only, if Dell can be one of the major players by selling only Intel chips then I am sure that it won't affect us that much. I just haven't got the time to mess about with hardware incompatibilities all week when I could be selling new systems that are compatiable (i.e. Intel based). I kow a lot of you like AMD chips, but that is your own deciusion not mine. If a 100% compatiable chipset was available for the Athlon/Duron then I may think about selling them.

BTW, for reference. When I managed to get teh Duron to be relativly stable in a coule of apps using the VooDoo3 2000, it lagged behind a Celeron 566 (Duron was running at 600Mhz) in all of the benchmarks. I am not stating that it is definatly lower performance than the Intel chip, but until I get a stable setup like the Celeron then I cannot be 100% certain. I am going to spend 1 more day on it, and if it doesn't get any better then I think it will be pushed to the back of teh cupboard under my workbench.

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[Paul Cunningham]

Darren

Instead of pushing it to the back of a cupboard to lie there forlorn and unloved, push it into a jiffy bag and post it to me

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[WildTech]

Hey Darrin,

I"m an AMD lover and its killing me to admit this, but I too had some configuration problems with the Athlon processors. I played around with the configs and now I can honestly say that I have a very stable and conflict free configuration. I've sold a ton of em with no returns.

Here it is:
SuperCase with 250watt p/s (yes 250 watt works fine)
Asus K7V mobo
Athlon CPU of your choice (I use 650s and 800s)
128mg PC133 Ram (micron)
ATI 8mg Rage 3D Pro AGP vid card or any VooDoo (they all work fine)
Yamaha PCI or Soundblaster Live Sound Cards
DSI Creative Chipset modems
I also use Western Digital H/Ds, Mitsumi floppys, and Afreey CD Roms or DVDs

I know it cost a little more to use the ASUS motherboard, but I'm telling you, I've used em all, and the ASUS is trouble free with any combination of the parts listed above. Tell your boss too quit spending dollars to save pennies. Your spending too much time trying to make uncompatable configurations work when there are much easier options.

Like you, I don't hate any brand. But I do have a preference for the AMD's. Kind of a Ford vs Chevy thing.........hehe.

I hope this info helps you out. Good Luck

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WildTech

**I'd rather be lucky than smart!!**

[Ribbon Cable]

Darren,

I think your experiences are the same as mine with AMD Athlons. Wonderful chips, good for demos where I can keep an eye on them, but need to be tested completely before someone walks out the door with them.

Perhaps the issue is with product testing, not at AMD, but with the other hardware manufacturers. How long is the "pipeline" between product design and product sale? For example, how long ago was it that a super-techy sat down to first devolpe the video processor chip in your current machine?

Next question, was the AMD Athlon around, and was the instruction set for said chip known and understood at the time? I know many SC and Video devices had trouble with 3D NOW technology when it first arrived on the K6s. Bottom line was nobody had tested their product on AMD K6 platforms, because none existed before the SC or Video cards went to market.

Could we be seeing the same thing here with Athlons?

Craig.

[jamesalexw]

Hey guys
I think you are missing one major point.
The VIA KX133 Chipset on those Athlon Mobo's is alomost identical to the VIA 133 Chipset on Pentium 3 Boards.
I now your all gonna say that your using Intel's 820 or 815 chipset but do remeber the 815 is the replacement to the 820 because Intel screwed up. VIA chipset's are the most readily available chipsets for either Intel or AMD. I would be interested to see if Darren's AGP problem resurfaced with a VIA 693 or 694 Pentium 3 Mobo.
I've used Athlons since they were first made available and I found most problems were down to drivers.
My advice is to use the latest drivers you can get your hands on, put them on a CD, install windows and then install them one by one till a problem surfaces. Then reinstall windows and try a different order.
All problems have solutions.
and my final point is that you can't blame AMD for chipset problems, unfortunately AMD don't have the manufacturing capacity to make chipsets as well, but they never will do if we don't stick our necks out and try and sort these problems. We can all help by emailing problems to either AMD, VIA or any other comapany who is involved.

[Darren Wilson]

James

Firstly I know that the VIA chipsets are the same for both types of processor but what you must remember is that the Athlon & Duron BOTH DRAW A BLOODY LOT OF POWER!!!!!! I don't like using Non-Intel chipsets on Intel based systems, so I cannot comment on twether or not similar probs would occur.

Secondly, AMD do make their own chipsets (what about the Irongate and the new one for the Durons???). Agreed that their are more boards around using the VIA chipset but I would rather use the AMD version instead.

Thridly, already done the driver 'solution' and it was still freezzing/crashing/BSOD/etc with just Win9x/Win2K (Not with the ATI as no drivers available) and Windows ME so I know it is not a driver issue with the cards. Which leaves only the CPU (nor iffy as it idoes the same on both a Duron & Athlon(slot) on different boards), bad RAM (changed a few times and double checked with a RAM tester), bad PSU (changed 3 times) or bad boards (two different boards totally) which leaves one common denominator, The CHIPSET (both VIA). As previously stated all the components work 100% on a Celeron 566 on a QDI BrillianX9 (i440BX) and on a PIII 500 on a Gigabyte GA6-BX2000 (my own system), so it still leads to a problem with the VIA chipset.

I am though still working on it though.

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[Paul Cunningham]

Thanks for all your input everybody.

I have ordered a Gigabyte GA71XE 4 and A Duron 600.

I should be gettong this within 3 or 4 days si I'll let you how it goes !!

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[jrobinson]

Got my new system last night with the Gigabyte GA-71XE and a 700mhz Athlon. Runs nicely after I enabled floppy drive seek. Can you honestly say they tested my system before they shipped? I think not! Just remember to check you bios Paul!

[Paul Cunningham]

J

How was floppy drive seek affecting your performance ?

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[jrobinson]

The performance was terrible, I couldn't boot up to load an o/s! LOL

Joel

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by paul cunningham:
J

How was floppy drive seek affecting your performance ?

"Windows 98 is excellent multytasking OS -
wait for minute,untill then my floppy drive finished formatting disk, and then we can switch to another task.
Bill Gates."
(from russian anecdots sources.)

[Paul Cunningham]

Good point Ruslan, Why does formatting a floppy need the entire resources of the computer.

I wonder if the department of defense have this problem ?

"Oh, sorry, can't have a war now, someones formatting a box of floppies !"

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[DesertEagle]

I agree with Darren's assesment. It IS the VIA chipset that is causing the problem with the video cards. I have tested this for weeks and I am 99.9% certain, thanks to some engineer friends and alot of expensive equipment, there is a timing issue with the chipset.

[Darren Wilson]

Just seen the latest update for the VIA 4 in 1 drivers ont eh Windrivers homepage. Will give them a try when I get to work and let you know if they help or not

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[Veriance]

Here is my 2 cents worth of statistical data.
I have no idea if things would work better with Intel since we do AMD only. Anyway we have our problems too. Here are this weeks findings.

Microstar MB
InWIN 250W
128 meg 133 ram
Tunderbird 750
WD 18 gig 7200/66
Adaptec 2940
ATI all in one Wonder (rage pro 8meg 2X)
8/20X CDRW scsi
100 mbit Cnet
Win2000

This system runs flawless no lockups at all.

Gigabyte GA-7ZM flashed bios
InWin 250
Tbird 750 / Duron 650
128Meg 133 ram
100 mbit Cnet
Seagate 13.5 7200/66

52X CD delta .. will not play Diablo II
52X Creative no problems

S3 A200 8meg flashed bios, still hangup
S3 540 32meg more hangups than A200
S3 S4 Acer 16meg hangs
RIVA TNT2 32meg works but freq. problems with some 19" monitors
Vodoo 3000 Works but could be faster

It seems Win2000 machines are MUCH more stable compared to the same machine with Win98 running. I have the Acer Savage4 working in a system with 2000. So for now I think drivers are still #1 suspect.