Athlon or Athlon T-Bird?

[Onyx Paladin]

Ok please be patient with me, as I've not had the opportunity to play with AMD cpus as of yet. Im looking at building some amd boxes, and I've noticed they athlon and the athlon t-bird...now, am I missing something terribly? The only thing I've noticed is the t-bird is a socket A and the regular athlon without the t-bird attached is a slot a cpu?
Which one of these are the newer ones? the socket A t-birds I would assume.
The slot A regular athlons seem to be overall cheaper in price.
Is there anything else I should know?
Do they have t-bird slot A cpus?
and if they do, then what the heck is the difference between them all around?
Thanks a million for any input and advice, I've been looking through all kinds of things and I've just noticed the differences over the last few days, and figured I better ask the experts.

Op

[JCB]

The socket A is the newer technology. Slot's are considered classics. Just like the socket A's will be next year.

[krusty the klown]

Also, there are no socket A (for T-Bird) to slot A (for Athlon 'classic') convertors, so a slot A board is already obsolete - socket A chips are still in production & may be for some time.

[Onyx Paladin]

Thanks for the input! At least I know now that I need to stick with the sockets and stay away from the slotted mobos.
Appreciate the help!!!!

Op

[krusty]

A t-bird has on die L2 cache running at the cpu speed. A Duron is similar but has less cache. The athlon classic has external L2 cache running at a fraction of the cpu speed i.e. 1/2 or 1/3 speed depending on cpu(the cache was rarley able to run much above 300mHz).

Most Slot versions of the athlon were NOT T-birds(a few of the later ones were). ALL Socket versions are T-birds or Durons.

Stay away from Slot A motherboards as they are out of date. Choose a Socket A board & get a T-bird cpu if money is not too much of an issue. If you are on a tight budget the Durons are still an excellent choice & will get close to P3 performance levels at a bargain price.

Good luck,

K.

[NDC]

Yep. T-Bird and Classic Athlon would be the the same thing as comparing P3 & P3 Coppermine where the L2 cache runs at the clock speed of the processor....