Diff btw ath/tb

[kaiotes]

what is the difference btw an athlon and a TB?? except price.

 

[whalen]

Well, thunderbird is just the code name for the Socket A athlon chips.... If you are refering to the older Athlon Classic Slot A's, the thunderbirds have 256k onboard L2 cache, where as the Classic Athlons have 512k L2 cache that runs at either 1/2 or 1/3? cant remember, of the CPU Speed..

 

[stockjock]

Whalen is correct on all cases and even need to add one more....
they run at 1/2, 1/3 and 2/5 depending on the speed of the processor.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

some tbirds are made with copper interconects(dresden fab)

 

[kaiotes]

i'm lookin at 1gig ath socket, in comparison w/ tb
so i take it the tb is faster if the processor speed is the same? as in 1 ath compared w/ 1 tb

 

[Viper GTS]

A 1 GHz Socket A Athlon IS a TBird. "Thunderbird" was the code-name for the Socket A Athlon before it was released. AMD simply calls them "Athlons" now, while the enthusiast market calls them "TBirds" to differentiate them from their older, slower Slot A counterparts.

Like has already been stated, the biggest difference besides the package (the majority of TBirds are Socket A vs. all classic Athlons in Slot A) is the cache. TBirds have full speed on-die L2 cache, whereas the older Athlon classics had off-die cache that operated at a fraction of the CPU speed (1/2, 2/5, 1/3).

If you have a Socket A motherboard, a classic Athlon is not an option for you. Likewise if you have a Slot A, a socket A TBird is not an option. There are some Slot A TBirds, but they're not that common.

Viper GTS