athlon vs duron - Tech Support Forums

dmanlyr · September 29th, 2002, 02:39 AM

I am looking for some real world reports reguarding the Athlon vs Duron. Has anyone used both, and if so, can you tell the difference between the two?

I was looking at say 1.2 duron or athlon, same 200fsb, but will the largeer L2 cache make that much difference? This is not a game machine, just a web surfer.

Thanks, David

FreakyOCR · September 29th, 2002, 02:59 AM

If you are just surfing the web you probably won't notice any difference.

If you were to do some gaming then an Athlon might be ideal but so would a good video card before it...

If the price difference is a few bucks then get the Athlon, but if it's a substancial savings then go with the duron.

In fact, the 1.2 Duron is based on the newer, faster and cooler Palomino core, whereas the Athlon wouldn't be. Might be worthwhile getting the duron....

Brainchild · September 29th, 2002, 03:42 AM

Usually the Durons are way cheaper, and like freaky says run cooler, but are also discontinued, or scheduled to be,so the price should be on the way down farther yet.
Performance wise, get a duron, and a nice video card, I think you'll be happy.
If you're buying a new MOBO, get one that supports 266FSB, and DDR, as that's what the next upgrade will require.

HTH
BC

travis4prez · September 29th, 2002, 03:56 AM

If you're going greater than 1Gz then get the Duron. The Morgan core rocks!
Quote stolen from hexus.net on the new Duron
"When the Athlon was first developed and launched there were 19 new instructions which were added to the CPU, which is what they refer to as 3DNow. They have added another 52, yes 52! Instructions to this new core, this is 3DNow Professional and is very similar to the SSE which the P3 is running currently. So how does this help you? Well it won’t make you WANT to buy it but these improvements mean that the current software on the market which is already coded to take advantage of these extra instructions can also aid the cores performance, and a lot of current applications are developed to be enhanced by these extra instruction sets."

kjg · September 29th, 2002, 12:52 PM

I have a 1300 duron and it runs very well and as said before I would go with the morgan core durons over the old athlons.

EndobioticChaos · September 29th, 2002, 01:21 PM

Athlons vs Durons... Well, I can tell you from personal experience that a Duron with a Morgan core megahertz for megahertz performs identical to a Tbird. My friend has a 1.2 Ghz Tbird, and I had my 1.0Ghz Duron OCed to about 1187Mhz... in SiSoft Sandra 2k1, my Duron scored just a teeny tiny bit less than his Athlon - as it should, if they perform the same per megahertz.

Turnip12 · September 29th, 2002, 01:47 PM

Why the choice between a 200FSB T-bird and a Duron? Why even consider the T-bird? The 1.4Ghz (1600+) Athlon XP is about 15 bucks more expensive than the 1.2Ghz Duron and 15 bucks cheaper than the T-bird, has a 266FSB, greater cache, and is 200mhz faster than the Duron. For another 15 bucks it doesn't make any sense to get the Duron, especially is you're pairing it with PC2100 (or faster) RAM. In addition the the processors, the more important choice would be with the motherboard. Check out some reviews before just picking out the most price attractive bundle. The nforce sets are kind of expensive, around 90 bucks or so, KT333s are aabout 10-15 bucks less, and then on the cheap end you can snag a KT266A for about 65 bucks including shipping. All Support DDR, and with the KT33s you can hit them up with PC2700.
Don't get me wrong, the Durons are a great chip, I have a Duron 750 in my personal comp, but the thing that makes them great is the value. If it isn't that much more to bump up to an Athlon XP, then there's no sense in getting the Duron. I got mine for 27 bucks anout 6 months ago, a great deal. But with todays prices on the Athlon XPs, I don't even consider any of the Durons. Check out http://www.pricewatch.com to do a quick comparison, but http://www.tcwo.com consistently has great prices on processors, cheap shipping, and great customer service. http://www.newegg.com also has great prices, a little more expensive on shipping, but crazy fast.
On another point, maybe with a T-bird 200FSB and a 1ghz+ duron, you could get similar scores on a synthetic benchmark, and maybe you will see similar performance on some tasks, but you won't on all apps, and you certainly won't compared to an Athlon XP. Forgive me for harping on this so much, but with the price difference as small as it is, I can't come up with any reason to get the duron.

vagpap · September 29th, 2002, 06:48 PM

Nice thread...

I am too just about to buy a new processor and all that info are very usefull.

Thanks
Vangelis

VERT · September 29th, 2002, 09:30 PM

I get better p[erformance form my Morgan Duron 1200 overclocked to 1450 than some of the lower end Athlon XPs, this is a bonus especailly when it cost a lot less

poopeyhed2 · September 29th, 2002, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Usually the Durons are way cheaper, and like freaky says run cooler, but are also discontinued, or scheduled to be,so the price should be on the way down farther yet.

The prices make fall, but I don't know, it's really unpredictable, I thought the 1.6A P4 would drop, but it costs more than a 1.8A!