Interesting challenge. I suspect the Tbird will win, but in a close race.

Build both and compare, I'd say.

The motherboards are more interesting. Not sure where you heard that the A7A266 was highly regarded. It was possibly the best ALi Magik1 board, but that chipset was a piece of crap, performing no better than the Via KT133A SDR-SDRAM chipset and far worse than the AMD760 and SiS735, not even managing to equal the lackluster Via KT266.
The ECS P6IPAT is the exact opposite - probably the fastest Tualatin chipset (assuming you don't want more than 512MB, in which case you'd be better off with SiS635T), but ECS=PC Chips (at least at this point in history) with quality & options to match.

So a fair comparison would be between the A7M266 and TUSL-C, but here both CPUs are hobbled in a different way.

dionb wrote:

Interesting challenge. I suspect the Tbird will win, but in a close race. […]
Show full quote

Interesting challenge. I suspect the Tbird will win, but in a close race.

Build both and compare, I'd say.

The motherboards are more interesting. Not sure where you heard that the A7A266 was highly regarded. It was possibly the best ALi Magik1 board, but that chipset was a piece of crap, performing no better than the Via KT133A SDR-SDRAM chipset and far worse than the AMD760 and SiS735, not even managing to equal the lackluster Via KT266.
The ECS P6IPAT is the exact opposite - probably the fastest Tualatin chipset (assuming you don't want more than 512MB, in which case you'd be better off with SiS635T), but ECS=PC Chips (at least at this point in history) with quality & options to match.

So a fair comparison would be between the A7M266 and TUSL-C, but here both CPUs are hobbled in a different way.

Ah crap... I think I might have been looking at the A7M266 when I was reading up on it 😁 still, I didn’t pay anything for it so I’m not too disappointed.

The P6IPAT I’ve got seems to be built pretty well with good Japanese caps etc. That combo certainly smashes 3Dmark2000 with the Voodoo5 but other than that I haven’t benched it. Will do some more benchmarks and try the V5 out in the Asus board maybe.

I don’t think the multipliers on a Tualatin can be changed can they... on the T-bird they can be changed with the “pencil mod” which would be another bonus.

Tualatin is multiplier-locked - no pencils here. Not that it makes a huge difference - in the case of Tualatin the FSB of the motherboard is the limiting factor anyway. If you can do 150MHz FSB you're doing well in any event.

TBH I wouldn't be too concerned about exact benchmark results. Compared to really old stuff this lot all fly, compared to anything from the last 10 years they are ancient. They are close enough that I doubt that anything will run on the one and not on the other, so I'd focus on motherboard size & features if you have to choose.

dionb wrote:

Tualatin is multiplier-locked - no pencils here. Not that it makes a huge difference - in the case of Tualatin the FSB of the motherboard is the limiting factor anyway. If you can do 150MHz FSB you're doing well in any event.

TBH I wouldn't be too concerned about exact benchmark results. Compared to really old stuff this lot all fly, compared to anything from the last 10 years they are ancient. They are close enough that I doubt that anything will run on the one and not on the other, so I'd focus on motherboard size & features if you have to choose.

Yup it runs happily at 150MHz all day long, stock CPU voltage. That’s the highest the board goes. Probably wouldn’t have done much more than that anyway.

Yeah I see what you’re saying about the benchmark results... just if one’s going to edge the other in games I may as well use that one 😀

https://www.realworldtech.com/760-vs-magik1/2/ - quite an interesting comparison I thought, not a huuuge gulf but those few percentage points might make all the differen

This likely won't have much affect on the games you want to play, but SSE support is a consideration. The PIII has it, the T-Bird doesn't.

I don't see many people going for Tbird rigs. They'll have their day in the sun at some point soon 😜

BeginnerGuy wrote:

I don't see many people going for Tbird rigs. They'll have their day in the sun at some point soon 😜

At the time they were great in terms of raw performance and value for money, but if those two factors are no longer that relevant you are left with a very hot-running CPU with fragile core, motherboards inevitably plagued with bad caps (and stressed by the high power draw) and little to offer that the newer, cooler (in both ways) AthlonXPs couldn't.

Agreed that they will have their day in the sun, if only because of all the dead motherboards being thrown out and the fragility of the core, supply might well be very limited, even if demand remains low.

Yes the SSE thing is something to consider... I guess the only way to find out is to get the T-bird overclocked and run some benchmarks 😀 I’m fully aware any difference between the two is extremely unlikely to be at all noticeable or maybe even measurable but if there’s a couple of percentage points either way I might as well use that one. The boards are comparable size and features wise - the ASUS one edges it slightly there.

Apparently the later BIOS updates can help close the performance gap between the ALI and the better chipsets so that’ll be on the to-do list.

Due to the reasons outlined above I might pick the T-bird just to go for something different 😁 I’ve always been an Intel guy and worst case I swap the motherboards back over...

I don't see many people going for Tbird rigs.

Because there's no practical reason to choose Thunderbird over 266mhz FSB Thoroughbred-B. Of course if you have decent KT133A+ board.

Apparently the board I have will take a 266MHz Barton no problem so much more scope for CPU upgrades than the other board.

However I’ve got a spare Palomino I’ve tried in there and either the board doesn’t support it or the CPU is dead.

The T-bird isnt a great overclocker either, even with a voltage bump to 1.85v it struggles to top 1.5ghz with any stability whichever combination of multipliers/FSB I use. Considering the Tualatin does 1.58 just from increasing the FSB...

3dmark results are pretty much neck and neck between the two at their max overclocks when using hardware T&L emulation but take around a 5-10% hit compared to the PIII when not using it.

I’d definitely have to move up to a faster Athlon to see any benefits. Thought the DDR memory might make a difference but it doesn’t, most likely due to some bottleneck (ALI chipset or the V5?)

if you can support AXP go AXP, just grab an XP 1600 @ 1.4ghz and enjoy