Athlon CPU differences

[Mikedaddy]

I was wondering about the differences between the AMD processors: The Athlon, Thunderbird and Duron...

Thanx in advance,

Mike

 

[Technonut]

Here is a very good recent review of the T-Bird compared to the Duron.

 

[TheCorm]

They all have 128KB of level 1 cache.
Level 2 cache...
Duron=64kb
Athlon=512kb
Thunderbird=256kb

The Duron and the Thunderbird both use the Socket A/462 interface and the original Athlon uses a Slot 1.

They all have Enhanced 3D Now capabilities.
The Duron performs about 5-10% less than the Thunderbird when compared on a clock for clock basis but is costs around 25% less.

Corm



<< Now I'm gonna look at the review Technonut mentioned... >>

 

[paulip88]

Also, the cache for the Duron and TBird run full speed while for the Athlon classic a divider is used since they didn't have too many fast RAM chips back then.

 

[froyo]

I believe you're missing the biggest point with the L2 cache on the T-bird and the Athlon classic, which is that the T-bird has the L2 cache on-die, so it's orders of magnitude faster than the classic's off-die cache. Therefore it doesn't need as much, and actually performs better even though it has a smaller amount of actual cache space