Tbird athlon.....Whats the difference?

[Pete1]

Just purchased an 800 t-bird athlon socket A. How is that different from the regular athlon cpu? Is the tbird the lower cost cpu?

[flash4master]

the tbird is the socket a athlon

[NDC]

The difference between AMD Athlon and AMD Athlon T-bird is the cache speed and size.

AMD Athlon

800 (2/5 speed L2)
L1 Cache: 128 KB
L2 Cache: 512 KB

AMD Athlon T-Bird

800 (1/1 speed L2)
L1 Cache: 128 KB
L2 Cache: 256 KB

The comparison is kinda like comparing P3 non-coppermine and P3 Coppermine processors. Only difference is that P3 non-coppermine L2 cache was 1/2 speed, not 2/5 like the AMD Athlon..

[Hellmund]

The orinal athlons were on a PCB with external cache and resided in Slot 'A'. Tbirds have internal cache and are in a Socket A.

[Richard_Cranium72]

There are 3 types of Athlon

1. Socket type
2. Slot A Athlon "Thunderbird"
3. Slot A Athlon "Classic"

I was gonna buy a 800mhz Slot A Athlon Thunderbird but some observant member remembered that I was running a "Classic" motherboard setup and advised me that it wold NOT work.

We really appreciate information like this, It saves time effort and perhaps ruined merchandise that probably would not be covered under a warranty.

DrVette

[Cruez]

So how much a difference is the T bird better??..

[This message has been edited by Cruez (edited 07-22-2001).]

[Hellmund]

Yes a T-bird is better, the cache speed makes a definite difference. I wish I could remember what clock speeds it was at the AMD had to change to 2/5 core speed as I remember a review where the last processor at 1:1 beat the higher clocked processor at 2:5.