About to make the jump to AMD

[Cal]

My ol' Intel Celeron II 533 @ 800 has served me long and well, but I've got upgrade fever again, so I'm going the AMD route for my new CPU. I just really don't like what I've been reading about the P4, and the gaming benchmarks I've seen pretty much speak for themselves. (Don't care about much else, I'm a Java developer, EditPlus doesn't tax my system too much ) But, I have several questions I was hoping one of you guys/gals could help me out with.
a) What's the difference between The "regular" Athlons and the T-Birds? Is it simply the multiplier lock (i.e. 100mhz bus for regs and 133mhz bus for Tbirds?)

b) Which Athlons use the DDR memory, and the ones that do, do they HAVE to use DDR mobos, or are they backwards compatible w/ SDRAM mobos?

c) On average how far can I oc the Athlons w/ standard cooling? (My hardcore OC days are behind me, I'm more of a quietness freak now and I simply refuse to punch holes in my box )

Thanks in advance for the advice!
Oh and thanks Arawak for your advice on painting PC components. I'm building a black system but simply could not part with my cordless freedom pro kb/mouse combo.

Cal

[afxdub]

First, as far as I can tell, the main difference between the Athlons and the TBirds is the extra L2 cashe that the TBirds have. There are plenty of TBirds out there running at 100MHz FSB.

Second, I'm pretty sure that any of the Athons will work with DDR. The main thing is getting a mobo that will support the memory.

Third, don't do it. If you plan on OCing an Athlon, get a better cooling fan and a case with good cooling. The Global Win FOP32-I provides great cooling and the thing is very quiet (read more about it at Tom's Hardware. They also only cost about $20. www.kdcomputers.com, www.millisec.com, and www.crazypc.com are just some of the places that carry it. One case that has great cooling and that won't break the bank is the Cyclone series from www.a-pro.com. The case is well laid out and has 3 very quiet 38CFM fans to expunge that nasty hot air.

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Abit KT7A
1 GHz TBird w/FOP32-I
256MB PC133
Leadtek Winfast GeForce2 Pro 32MB
45GB Maxtor ATA100 at 7200RPM
10/100 NIC
HP CD-RW, Pioneer 10x/40x DVD
RealMagic Hollywood 3 DVD Decoder

[This message has been edited by afxdub (edited 03-24-2001).]

[cbrsurfr]

I think you meant the difference between T-Bird and T-bird "C".

T-bird uses socket a and a 100(200ddr) fsb

T-bird C also uses socket a but a 100(266ddr) fsb

You would need either a KT133A (sdram) mobo or a ddr motherboard.

DDR boards aren't really worth the performance boost right now. A good KT133A board performs about the same as a ddr board.

I have a standard coolermaster hsf on my Duron 650 @ 850. I did replace the coolermaster fan with a ys tech. T-birds are usually good for at least a 200mhz overclock. Some have 1.0ghz chips at 1.3-1.5ghz, but that is with good cooling.

I believe all amd socket a chips can be run on a ddr mobo. As far as I know there aren't any special ddr only chips. Just like the PIII can be run on sdram or rambus.

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[Bink]

The Thunderbird is an Athlon. It's just a particular model of Athlon you could say.

The Thunderbird actually has less cache then the original Athlon classic. The Thunderbird has 256k of full speed cache, where as the Athlon classic has 512k of much much slower cache.

cbrsurfr pretty much explained the rest

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Before, I had everything... now, there is a cow in my nose.