Tbird vs. athlon

[t048]

What is the difference between AMD's thunderbird and athlon? The AMD websight says that thunderbird is only a different name for athlon. if that is true, then why do stores sell them both as different products?

The reason I ask is mainly because AMD lists the ASUS A7V motherboard as an approved athlon board, but the ASUS sight says that it only supports the tbird and duron.

[Szech]

The old school athlons are slot A. The Thunderbirds are socket A. The athlons used a cache divider, so the cache didn't run at the full speed of the processor. The Thunderbirds have on-die cache, so the cache runs at the same speed as the processor (BIG speed boost). I think there might be some more differences, but that's the meat of them.

[t048]

It sounds like the tbird is preferable to the athlon. I wonder, then, why they are very close to the same price.

[qball]

Slot A and socket A have different pin and power requirements, that's why the mobo info may not quite match.

I believe the Athlons used more power than the Tbirds, but there may be more to the slot/socket issue.

[lost1]

Athlon Classics will only fit a Slot A board. The processor is housed within a cartridge (like a Pentium II) that is seated into a long slot on the motherboard.
T-Birds and Durons are square socket type processors, like a K6 or original Pentium, therefore requiring a different type of motherboard than the Classic.

According to AMD, the speed difference between an Athlon Classic and a T-Bird is about 50MHz (in favor of the T-Bird) for any given speed. Therefore, a 750 T-Bird is about as fast as an 800 Athlon Classic.

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[t048]

Thanks for the info... I finally get it now http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif