Underdog AMD pulls though!
Written: Jul 18 '01 (Updated Jul 20 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Faster and runs cooler than Pentium 4, cheap
Cons: Slower and hotter than Pentium 3
The Bottom Line: Currently the fastest and coolest proc on the market!
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| mobomofo's Full Review: AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1.83 GHz (AXDA2500BOX) Retail... |
With Intel's release of the Pentium 4, AMD's Athlons have pulled ahead and into the lead!
I upgraded from a 450MHz Pentium 3 to an 1200MHz Athlon because I could see that that would be cheaper than sticking with Intel. After I got it I noticed that price wasn't the only advantage AMD had now over Intel.
For why read on, other wise skip this paragraph :)
The Pentium 4 was certainly more money, but it was also slower and ran hotter than the Athlons were! Further research revealed that you also need to purchase a special Pentium 4 case, motherboard, memory, heatsink, and powersupply! Why? The motherboard to support the new chip, the memory to fit the board, the copper based heatsink to cool the really hot processor, and the case to support the heavy heatsink (that's right, the copper of the heatsink is so heavy, it must be bolted to the case!), and the powersupply to fit the special motherboard socket.
Whew...!
Anyway, the only disadvantage to the Athlon is that it's still slower and hotter than a Pentium 3, so you must accommodate when you make the upgrade- nothing big. I only needed some case fans which I didn't need with my P3 450. I made sure I got a processor than was at least faster than the fastest P3, so I got the 1.2GHz Athlon.
I've been satisfied with it so far. My system has never been this stable. Of course, the rest of my system is stable, too. It's also really fast :)
To give you an idea: my system boots Win98 in about 15 seconds- if that. Specs:
Asus A7A266 mobo
1200MHz AMD Athlon T-Bird
256MB PC2100 Crucial DDR RAM
30GB Quantum FireBall AS
SBLive mp3+
Kingston NIC
350w Sparkle Power Supply
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
mobomofo
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Location: tha 'noth ; )
Reviews written: 41
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me:
Mobomofo has a great knowledge of electronic components. So great, he thought to share it!
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