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Intel vs AMD?

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First post, by gladders

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I'm sure this has been done to death before but I couldn't see anything obvious.

I have acquired an AMD Athlon 500MHz alongside my slightly crusty Pentium III 450MHz. By slightly crusty, the ABIT BX-6 motherboard of the P3 has some rust in its ports, making connecting the mouse and keyboard a bit of a pain sometimes.

I'm tempted to get rid of the P3 and keep the AMD. Any drawbacks to this idea? It'll primarily be a gaming rig, ideally from as early as possible to late 90s.

No, I can't keep both.

Reply 1 of 20, by Anonymous Coward

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The Athlon might have the edge, but it can never be paired with a BX chipset.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 3 of 20, by alvaro84

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gladders wrote:

What types of things would I lose out on if I deviate from that chipset?

My experience with early Athlon chipsets that they're weak at video access under DOS. My experimental build could run Win98 games like a champ, it performed well, but under DOS games/demos it lagged behind a BX system.

Shame on us, doomed from the start
May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts

Reply 4 of 20, by dionb

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Which chipset does the Athlon have? On paper the KX133 was faster, but had lots of issues, where the AMD750 Irongate was the BX of the Athlon world - RAM at same clock as CPU, but solid, particularly with AMD southbridge (although AMD751+Via 686B was also quite common and worked, albeit with same PCI issues as 686B on Via northbridges). Also, does it have an ISA slot?

Also, which chipset does the P3 have? If it's something crappy like the Via Apollo+, you're definitely better off with the Athlon regardless of chipset. Only if it's a solid BX would it be time to weigh the differences.

In any event the Athlon is the faster and the more unusual system.

Reply 5 of 20, by BinaryDemon

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No SSE support if that matters to you.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 6 of 20, by chinny22

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My Slot A M/B is the FIC SD11 (AMD-751 + VIA 686A) and it felt like my BX based system back in the late 90's, that is unrefined. It did feel like AMD abandoned slot A much earlier and drivers never reached the maturity/reliability of intels' BX.
The BX chipset is such a tried and tested chipset it's one of the most stable and well supported, it's why so many people overclocked their motherboards rather then getting another M/B that did support 133 FSB.

That said I do like my Slot A, it is different. I would highly recommend running a system up and testing it out for yourself.

Reply 7 of 20, by gladders

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dionb wrote:

Which chipset does the Athlon have? On paper the KX133 was faster, but had lots of issues, where the AMD750 Irongate was the BX of the Athlon world - RAM at same clock as CPU, but solid, particularly with AMD southbridge (although AMD751+Via 686B was also quite common and worked, albeit with same PCI issues as 686B on Via northbridges). Also, does it have an ISA slot?

Also, which chipset does the P3 have? If it's something crappy like the Via Apollo+, you're definitely better off with the Athlon regardless of chipset. Only if it's a solid BX would it be time to weigh the differences.

In any event the Athlon is the faster and the more unusual system.

It's an ASUS K7M, so it has an AMD-750 Irongate and 751.

Yes, it has one ISA, which is going to have my AWE 64 in it.

The P3 is an ABIT BX6 motherboard, so Intel 440BX.

Reply 8 of 20, by Intel486dx33

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There is more to think about than just CPU types.

Motherboards
RAM
PSU
Slot types
Compatible case

And most importantly what type of cards do you plan on putting in this computer ?
ISA / PCI / AGP /

From my experience the Intel BX 440 motherboard without audio is most Versatile usually having 3 ISA, 3 PCI and 1 APG.

If I was going for versatility, driver support, compatibility, and reliability I would go with the Intel BX-440
This motherboard is usually rock solid in stability, performance and driver support.

This was probably the best motherboard chipset of the late 1990’s/2000

Reply 9 of 20, by swaaye

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ASUS K7M is pretty solid but it has AGP compatibility issues like most other non Intel boards of the time. Voodoo3-5 or NV TNT2 are good choices. Those were stable at AGP 2x on my K7M. Geforces and Radeons will likely run at 1x and if I remember right are still not entirely stable.

Voodoo1 probably won't work. Voodoo2 needs a special Athlon compatible driver.

As for my overall opinion, Slot A Athlon is a fascinating heavy duty Intel beating CPU that uses more power and has a platform with lots of quirks. It's really not very solid until Athlon 64.

Reply 10 of 20, by mothergoose729

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In my experience with windows 98, how good of time you are going to have really comes down to chipsets. The intel chipsets are usually better behaved. I don't think the speed difference between the athlon and the p3 are that significant.

Before you get rid of anything, try setting up some software on the athlon and see how it goes.

Reply 12 of 20, by ShovelKnight

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gladders wrote:

Based on people's comments I'll likely keep the P3. Any tips on how to clean rust off PS/2 contacts?

Spray some contact spray (e.g. Servisol or Deoxit) into the PS/2 connector. While it hasn't evaporated, insert and remove a PS/2 plug repeatedly. This should take care of your problem.

Reply 13 of 20, by gdjacobs

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chinny22 wrote:

My Slot A M/B is the FIC SD11 (AMD-751 + VIA 686A) and it felt like my BX based system back in the late 90's, that is unrefined. It did feel like AMD abandoned slot A much earlier and drivers never reached the maturity/reliability of intels' BX.
The BX chipset is such a tried and tested chipset it's one of the most stable and well supported, it's why so many people overclocked their motherboards rather then getting another M/B that did support 133 FSB.

That said I do like my Slot A, it is different. I would highly recommend running a system up and testing it out for yourself.

People also stuck with their BX boards because Intel 820 was a notorious stinker.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 14 of 20, by Anonymous Coward

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I don't think 820 was really a stinker. The main fault was that it used insanely expensive RDRAM. But you are correct about performance stinking when SDRAM was hacked onto it.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 15 of 20, by SSTV2

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swaaye wrote:

ASUS K7M is pretty solid but it has AGP compatibility issues like most other non Intel boards of the time. Voodoo3-5 or NV TNT2 are good choices. Those were stable at AGP 2x on my K7M. Geforces and Radeons will likely run at 1x and if I remember right are still not entirely stable.

^This. If you wish to have a better performing Slot system, stick with an i440BX based motherboard and if you wish to have a more unique system, stick with an irongate, those are much rarer.

Reply 16 of 20, by gdjacobs

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

I don't think 820 was really a stinker. The main fault was that it used insanely expensive RDRAM. But you are correct about performance stinking when SDRAM was hacked onto it.

It used RDRAM for generally no performance benefit. It's prime virtue was that it supported a faster FSB.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 17 of 20, by The Serpent Rider

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On paper the KX133 was faster, but had lots of issues

It's equal to its 694X counterpart and mostly on par with 440BX. Thunderbird is not officially supported though.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 18 of 20, by dionb

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

I don't think 820 was really a stinker. The main fault was that it used insanely expensive RDRAM. But you are correct about performance stinking when SDRAM was hacked onto it.

It was probably the worst train-wreck Intel ever produced...

The final version was stable enough, but only after major issues:
- originally it was designed to use 3 RIMM slots, but it turned out to be impossible to get the motherboards stable with more than two RIMMs installed. All i820 motherboards with 3 RIMM slots were recalled and replaced with boards with only 2 RIMM slots.
- RDRAM was too expensive, so the MTH was devised to use SDRAM with i820. Not only was performance abysmal (combining low throughput of SDRAM with high latency of RDRAM), but this solution was also unstable. Intel recalled all SDRAM i820 motherboards and replaced them with RDRAM motherboards, replacing the SDRAM with RDRAM at their cost.

So you were left with boards with 2 RIMM slots and ludicrously expensive RDRAM. That was eventually stable, but after two recalls and diabolical reviews across the press, no one would touch it with a barge pole.

Reply 19 of 20, by Living

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Anonymous Coward wrote:

I don't think 820 was really a stinker. The main fault was that it used insanely expensive RDRAM. But you are correct about performance stinking when SDRAM was hacked onto it.

https://redhill.net.au/c/c-g.html#i820