To be fair, the Thunderbirds also ran as hot as they were fast. The palomino xp's took the temps down quite a bit. It was the golden age of AMD.
I was building computers at the time and I'll have to say you're full of it. Were you alive then?
To be fair, the Thunderbirds also ran as hot as they were fast. The palomino xp's took the temps down quite a bit. It was the golden age of AMD.
Man, I still remember my undergrad days when I was sponsored by AMD, EPoX and a bunch of HSF vendors (Zalman, etc.) So many chipped/cracked Duron cores, it wasn't funnyPlease tell me you were being facetious. Thunderbirds were great processors.
Man, I still remember my undergrad days when I was sponsored by AMD, EPoX and a bunch of HSF vendors (Zalman, etc.) So many chipped/cracked Duron cores, it wasn't funny
On that note, I'll never forget the day when AMD sent over an XP 2000+. Damn near had a geekgasm.
I remember going from a PII-300 @ 450 to an Athlon XP 1800+ (don't remember if there was a CPU in-between those two). I finally got to join "The Gigahertz club". It was glorious. I made some complaints about my KT400 MSI mobo, when I found out that it lacked PCI bus-parking, but it was always a stable rig for me.On that note, I'll never forget the day when AMD sent over an XP 2000+. Damn near had a geekgasm.
IndeedThat must have been cool in its own right to have been sponsored. That would have been a good time to be sponsored too, new hardware every other month was coming out back then.
I was building computers at the time and I'll have to say you're full of it. Were you alive then?
Thunderbird cores were not good at anything except space heating.
I had a T-Bird 1.2 GHz and a Soltek Motherboard
I thought it was the best thing ever.
My father, at the time, thought I was nuts for going AMD... Kept bring up my previous K6/2 450 Machine as an example. (Dad had a Pentium 233 MMx at the time I had the K6/2 and they were probably about even if I remember right despite the MHz difference)
The T-Bird eat his P III though
I've actually run AMD Processors my whole life in my desktops other than my 2500k system I recently sold. (had a 1090T, then 1045T, than 940 before that) Not a fan of either, I just generally buy AMD I guess. Or I'm stupid.
The T-birds were the fastest CPUs of their time. I still remember buying a 1.4 GHz, 266 bus Thunderbird for $149 at a time when it was the fastest CPU in the world. It wasn't a great overclocker--best I could do was to increase the bus speed from 133 to 138 and run it at 1.52 GHz--but then again, it didn't need to be. There were no P3s near its clock speed and the Willamette P4's were the Bulldozer of their time.
The Tualatin P3 actually had 512K of level 2 cache running at full speed, and it came along well after the Thunderbirds' run had ended. It competed with the Palomino cores, which had been out several months by the time Intel came up with the 1.4 Tualatin. But, if you were playing anything on the Quake 2 engine, it would have been faster than a 1.4 T-bird. You would have needed a Pally at about 1.6 to beat it.
I never went back to Intel. I kept the T-bird until right before the Palomino was discontinued. Newegg blew out its stock of XP 1600+ (1.4 GHz) Pallys at $42 each. I bought one and pushed it to 1.81 GHz on air, which was screaming fast for its day. A lot of other people bought them and got similar results--basically, a $125 2200+ for a third of the price.
Deals like that don't happen anymore because AMD isn't competing in the performance segment. I sure wish they'd get their act together.
To be clear, that is when I stayed up with the times. My friend had 1.4 tualatin PIII with what I beleive to be 256k L2, and an intel motherbaord with an 815 chipset. D815EEA2 model I beleive. It would smoke my 1.4 t-bird using a gigabyte GA-7DXR+ w/ AMD 761 chipset.
Later though I worked up to a AthlonXP t-bred B chip 2600+ on a GA-7VRXP board. It would blow the P4 400/533 FSB cpus out of the water, but once the northwood / prescotts hit 800 FSB, they surpassed and I jumped ship to Intel until athlon 64. Then jumped ship again with Core 2 Duo's. Maybe to stay unless AMD can get as awsome at intel at chipset RAID and SATA 3.
Anything AMD blew Pentium 4 out of the water in price/performance. I don't even care if it was the "Extreme Editions". Once you overclocked a Barton it was a beast and it even had much better IPC.
Anything AMD blew Pentium 4 out of the water in price/performance.
Put it in a perspex block, and put the block on your desk.
I wished that were the case when I bought my P4C 2.4GHz (northwood) I badly wanted an X2, but even the very cheapest X2's at the time were out of my price league. So I had to buy my northwood and OC it to 3.2GHz (which was an easy OC) and just live with being jealous of all my AT friends who had X2's in their rigs.
ahh the good old days I would keep it.
Great chip in its time even if they ran hot.
Overclocking was alot more interesting back then.
I doubt they were as hot as we all remember. The hsf units back then were really terrible. Tiny little things with tiny fans blowing straight down. Even today's stock Intel cooler is much bigger.
Well, it seems I have more than a couple socket A coolers. I have FOUR of them! The first one I purchased was the Thermaltake Volcano 2. It wasn't the world's greatest overclocker, but it was very quiet. Thermaltake was a new company back in 1999. Interesting at all the tech companies that are no longer with us, but Thermaltake is still here.