I would go for the Tualatin if you are after raw performance. Othrwise use the Athlon 1.4 (but cool it well) because it was a badass when it was new.
Badass heat.
Badass performance.
Badass die-cracking... wait... what? 🤣

Get some cool KT266A board with AGP Pro or other nice features 😁

I'd say the king of 2001 was the Athlon Thunderbird, it was a total monster in it's day, and this comes from someone who had a P4 "willamette" 1.5(Compaq) skt 423 from my company at home at the time. That was probably the most expensive machine of it's time, thankfully I didn't have to pay for it.

I've had a NIB Asus Geforce 3 in my parts box for ages, guess I should give it a spin, it has cool 3D glasses too.

Athlon parts are a little easier to source, especially motherboards. And you can go much higher too, which is always a nice plus. However, Athlons have slightly special requirements in regards to the PSU, make sure whichever you get has a nice 5V rail, they draw a lot of current from that rail. Not so much so the older models, such as 1.4GHz and 1600+, but certainly something to keep in mind if you intend to go higher.
Other than that, Tualatin-S should be equal clock for clock with Thunderbird or really really close.

Of note, if you go Athlon, I'd recommend NForce 2 boards, they are much less of a hassle than Via stuff.

Arctic wrote:

I would go for the Tualatin if you are after raw performance. Othrwise use the Athlon 1.4 (but cool it well) because it was a ba […]
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I would go for the Tualatin if you are after raw performance. Othrwise use the Athlon 1.4 (but cool it well) because it was a badass when it was new.
Badass heat.
Badass performance.
Badass die-cracking... wait... what? 🤣

Get some cool KT266A board with AGP Pro or other nice features 😁

You forgot the need for badass 5v rails 😁

And those early sA boards were lots of fun to mess around with! (Yes, I'm looking at you, A7V133 1.05 without a dot, but in the end I got you running with 1GB SDRAM and Palomino 😁)

Alkhatri wrote:

Which one is better for a 2001 Gaming PC? Pentium 3 Tualatin Athlon XP 1600+ Athlon 1.4GHz I am still choosing the parts for the […]
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Which one is better for a 2001 Gaming PC?
Pentium 3 Tualatin
Athlon XP 1600+
Athlon 1.4GHz
I am still choosing the parts for the build, but from what I saw on Ebay, the prices on Athlon XP Were very cheap while the Tualatins were more expensive.
NOTE: I didn't add the Pentium 4 because it got beaten in some Benchmarks by the Tualatin and the T-bird.
Here are the parts that I chose:
Motherboard? Socket 370? 462 A?
CPU?
Ram 512MB of PC133/DDR
Graphics: Geforce 3 Ti with a better cooler Because I might overclock it to 220/500
Sound: SB Live! X-Gamer
LAN: Intel Pro/100s
Power Supply: 450 Watts
Those were the parts that I chose
The case is going to be the one from my Childhood PC which housed an AMD Duron 1GHz, 128MB of RAM and Geforce 2MX but unfortunately, the Power supply Died a horrible death (Some of my little brothers changed the voltage input on the Back of the PP When I turned the PC on, Smoke started to come out) and it damaged the motherboard and some of the components.

But in all seriousness, if you want an easy ride, go Tualatin with i815, but just watch out for those tall CPU heatsinks. These might be a bit more pricey though

You could always go dual Athlon MP with a TYAN Tiger or Thunder for really bad-ass, that was 2001 too. Now that is a real monster! In Fact the Tyan will take 2 Durons, so cheap and pretty easy to manage too.

Tualatin can be very competitive with early Athlon XP. I use my Tualatin on a DDR board, which actually boosts performance by a surprising amount. It's also overclocked to 1575MHz. Depending on the app, performance can range from XP-1800 (Quake III, 3DMark03/05 CPU tests, DOSBox) up to near XP-2400 levels of performance (Doom 3, 3DMark01SE, H.264 software decoding). However, back when I was still using a plain old SDR board with the Tualatin, performance was quite a bit weaker--at 1585MHz it performed more like an XP-1800 in most cases, and a bit slower in others.

PIII's SSE implementation seems to be stronger than K7's, with SSE aware apps really shining on the overclocked Tualatin. For example Tualatin at 1575 can handle 720p H.264 decoding with CoreAVC 1.8.5 while Athlon XP 1800+ (1533MHz) doesn't quite cut it. Raw x87 just flys on the Athlon though, and older games may prefer x87 over SSE.

Of course, that's about as good as it gets for Tualatin; you can't go much higher than an overclocked 1400 on a rare and expensive DDR board. With the Athlon XP, DDR is common and you can go much higher than a XP-2000+. Plus, the 333FSB variants of Athlon XP are much better than any of the 266FSB chips that I mentioned above. Using an nForce board would boost performance further.

Tetrium wrote:

Alkhatri wrote:

Which one is better for a 2001 Gaming PC? Pentium 3 Tualatin Athlon XP 1600+ Athlon 1.4GHz I am still choosing the parts for the […]
Show full quote

Which one is better for a 2001 Gaming PC?
Pentium 3 Tualatin
Athlon XP 1600+
Athlon 1.4GHz
I am still choosing the parts for the build, but from what I saw on Ebay, the prices on Athlon XP Were very cheap while the Tualatins were more expensive.
NOTE: I didn't add the Pentium 4 because it got beaten in some Benchmarks by the Tualatin and the T-bird.
Here are the parts that I chose:
Motherboard? Socket 370? 462 A?
CPU?
Ram 512MB of PC133/DDR
Graphics: Geforce 3 Ti with a better cooler Because I might overclock it to 220/500
Sound: SB Live! X-Gamer
LAN: Intel Pro/100s
Power Supply: 450 Watts
Those were the parts that I chose
The case is going to be the one from my Childhood PC which housed an AMD Duron 1GHz, 128MB of RAM and Geforce 2MX but unfortunately, the Power supply Died a horrible death (Some of my little brothers changed the voltage input on the Back of the PP When I turned the PC on, Smoke started to come out) and it damaged the motherboard and some of the components.

But in all seriousness, if you want an easy ride, go Tualatin with i815, but just watch out for those tall CPU heatsinks. These might be a bit more pricey though

I have an i815 Tualatin system, too. It is not as as exciting as an Athlon Thunderbird.
Hey, you could have fun trying out the pencil trick! In the Intel system you will be disappointed about the performance of the chipset, the 512MB limit (mine booted with even more but then crashed! huh?)

@Standard Def Steve
He doesn't need an Athlon XP to enjoy DDR, though 😀
It all depends on the chipset.

But as mentioned above - cooling a Thunderbird is a bitch 😁

@BSA Starfire
Dual Duron? 😕

http://techreport.com/review/3461/tyan-tiger- … x-motherboard/4

Dual Duron's. 😀

Good question , between the Tbird Athlon 1400 and the Tualatin 1400-S its a mixed bag and it really depends on the software ,and its not just categories, even different games respond differently to each. For instance I've found Giants Citizen Kabuto and Evolva run better with the Tualatin , while Max Payne is a bit faster on the Athlon.

That said, the one big advantage for the Tualatin is the temperature and power requirements, the Athlon 1400 can get very hot with the stock AMD cooler and the power requirements are more stringent as it needs a robust 5v rail on the PSU, the Tualatin is cooler running and consumes alot less power.

the Athlon XP is a bit more efficient than the Athlon and an AXP compatible board will be more likely to have DDR RAM and options for future CPU upgrades so that could be an option.

and yes the P4 Williamette are quite inefficient , Ive been running a 1.7Ghz P4 and compared to the Tbird/Tualatin 1400 and in general it struggles to keep up (the only exception Ive seen is 3DMark01 and Quake3 which seems to really favour the P4)

I'd grap an xp-1700 t-bredB if I was you

Athlon XP is the easier of the two and much cheaper (for now), just be sure to get a Good cooler and strong psu. The boards can be dirt cheap so have fun getting a high end board for chicken feed 😉

candle_86 wrote:

I'd grap an xp-1700 t-bredB if I was you

2100+ was where it was at! I bought new, a TBredB 2100+ and EPoX 8RDA+, and first thing I did was turn the FSB up to 333mhz (2700+). On stock cooler and voltage. BAM!

Edit/ I still remember the stepping! AUIHB.

poeee wrote:

candle_86 wrote:

I'd grap an xp-1700 t-bredB if I was you

2100+ was where it was at! I bought new, a TBredB 2100+ and EPoX 8RDA+, and first thing I did was turn the FSB up to 333mhz (2700+). On stock cooler and voltage. BAM!

Edit/ I still remember the stepping! AUIHB.

The 1700 was unlocked up and down 😜

I thought the 2100+ was, too? It's been a while! Maybe they locked them later on?

Arctic wrote:

I have an i815 Tualatin system, too. It is not as as exciting as an Athlon Thunderbird. Hey, you could have fun trying out the p […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

But in all seriousness, if you want an easy ride, go Tualatin with i815, but just watch out for those tall CPU heatsinks. These might be a bit more pricey though

I have an i815 Tualatin system, too. It is not as as exciting as an Athlon Thunderbird.
Hey, you could have fun trying out the pencil trick! In the Intel system you will be disappointed about the performance of the chipset, the 512MB limit (mine booted with even more but then crashed! huh?)

@Standard Def Steve
He doesn't need an Athlon XP to enjoy DDR, though 😀
It all depends on the chipset.

But as mentioned above - cooling a Thunderbird is a bitch 😁

@BSA Starfire
Dual Duron? 😕

I agree with you on the Tualatin being not so terribly exciting, but imo it's the better system compared to Thunderbird for overall use, especially if you simply want a system of that era going.

The CPU HSF for Tualatin is really something I underestimated at first, but with a bit of fizzling it's not much of an issue.

1400 Thunderbirds are a challenge to get running well, but once it is running it's all the more rewarding if you ask me 😁

Tualatin boards with DDR were always difficult to find, let alone cheap. I got only a single s370 boards from an OEM and it's a Coppermine board and I purchased it even though it had a broken cap (but somehow no goo on top of the cap? But at least it had DDR slots and I was just happy to finally having one).

I actually experimented with the pencil trick 🤣!
Don't remember what it was I was doing exactly, probably mostly trying out all kinds of weird stuff and it was then when I found out the Thunderbirds used some kind of trick to get those final upper CPU multipliers. Dunno how things are now, but I think 12x or 12.5x was the most one could get out of a penciltricked Thunderbird?

i815 was considered the better chipset, but I still decided to get my hands on virtually all Tualatin capable board I could get cheaply.

I agree. With an Athlon like that, the motherboard/chipset is a bit of a gamble. If you get the right board/chipset, it can perform very well, and be very stable. But if you get unlucky, it can be slow and buggy, or anything in between. I've had one Athlon system with an MSI K7T Turbo board. It was stable, but not fast. AGP performance was much slower than an i815 system (there's a bug in the Athlon CPU, which doesn't allow it to use 4 MB pages for the AGP aperture, so you're stuck with 4 KB, which is a lot more overhead), and the USB ports were very bad. I couldn't use them for low-latency audio devices for example. You'd get a lot of snap-crackle-pop, even at useless latency settings like 50 ms, where the same device would do 3-5 ms on a system with decent USB ports (perhaps a PCI card with USB ports could have solved that).

I've also had an Asus A7V266-E board, which was quite fast, but it wasn't stable. It would work without a problem for a few hours, and then suddenly it just froze. No matter what BIOS settings I tried, or different memory, PSU, video card, whatever. I could never get that fixed.

A Pentium III system with an Intel chipset on the other hand is pretty much a no-brainer. It just works, and performance is great. Intel has excellent chipsets with great AGP, PCI and USB performance (not surprising, Intel defined these standards, their chipsets can be seen as the reference implementation), and fine harddisk controllers as well.
The raw power of the Athlon CPU may be slightly higher, but the system as a whole can be a different story (combining a Pentium III with a VIA or SiS chipset is also a recipe for disaster).

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Shuttle-AK32V-ATX-PC- … dIAAOSwLqFV8ty6
^ Is this motherboard good enough or should I go with a more expensive motherboard (MSI)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Brand-NEW-Powork-650w … zcAAOSwoudW5t8M
^Is this power supply good for an Athlon Machine?
BTW I chose a Athlon XP 1600+ and the Operating system might be Windows ME or 2000