diff between duron and tbird

[jak]

ok im gona build a new system w/ a athlon for the first time. im used to pentiums. but anyways, im gonna use hte system for dvd tv playstation, 3-d games, etc. will i notice a diff. between the 2? the duron is soo much cheaper. also im gonna get the eopx 8k7a w/ ddr duron will allow ddr right just not a 266 but rather 200fsb,am i correct?
jak

[NDC]

The two chips are very similar. Both are built on the same 0.18 process. Both use the Socket A form factor, with its 462 pin interface, and both feature the K7 core. Both chips use a 100MHz DDR front side bus, with the effective bandwidth of a 200MHz bus, and 266Mhz is available for T-Bird. Both have 128K of L1 cache, and both use AMD's enhanced 3DNow! instructions. While the T-Bird has 256K of on-chip L2 cache, the Duron is only equipped with 64K. The main difference would be the L2 cache size and speed.

[Kuasimodem]

If you want an idea of the differences, here (http://www.athlonoc.com/duron_1.php) is a head to head comparison of the two. The article is a little dated, so the prices now are MUCH lower than stated in the article.

[nunyadam]

so to put that in layman's terms
more cash = more cache, which if I remember correctly =about 10% more performance.


nunya

[ragtop]

In general, there's not that much difference between T-bird and Duron at the same clock and fsb speeds. Maybe 10% on some benchmarks, but only 1 or 2 FPS in games. But it seems kinda silly to buy a nice DDR motherboard unless you're going to use a 266mhz processor.

According to the Epox web site, Duron will work with that board, but I would think the board is optimized for best performance with the 266 mhz Tbirds.

[JacobM5727]

if i am correct, the difference is that the duron is supposed to be able to compete with the celeron, so its not made to perform as well as the t-bird is. its more of a low end chip

[Hellmund]

Well that is kinda the 'jist' of it. The cache is the reason for the higher price as it's really fast, really expensive form of memory. The duron was intended to compete with the celeron but frankly it stop the celeron dead in it's tracks and instead takes on the PIII. A similarly clocked Duron does beat a PIII in most benchmarks. The duron is a cut-down version of the T-bird which AMD keeps at a lower clock-speed so it doesn't impact on the T-birds sales.