Duron 850 -> Duron 1300: Worth it?

[ndee]

We are having a LAN Party and my bro'(he's on a VERY tight budget) has a Ti-4200 card, 256MB RAM and a Duron 850. Do you guys think it's worth the 30$ to upgrade it to a Duron 1300?

Thanks guys.

 

[Sid59]

i'd spend 30 bucks for that upgrade.

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: Sid59
i'd spend 30 bucks for that upgrade.

how much of an improvement are we talkin' here?

 

[Mrburns2007]

850 duron is slow....going up 450 would be quite noticable.

 

[Wolfsraider]

i agree

probable 40 to 50 % faster but at least 30% faster (real world)

mike

 

[ndee]

Thanks, I ordered the CPU It's not the same "architecture" like the old Duron, they changed something, right?

 

[TheCorm]

Originally posted by: ndee
Thanks, I ordered the CPU It's not the same "architecture" like the old Duron, they changed something, right?

The old <1ghz Durons had spitfire cores, they were considered to be scaled down Athlon Thunderbirds while the 1ghz+ Durons have Morgan cores and considered more to be scaled down Athlon XP's although they do still have 100mhz (200) FSB.

They have Pre-Fetch and SSE Instructions like the Athlon XP does...If the board supports Athlon XP's then there will definately be no trouble, most socket a boards will support the morgan based Duron anyhoo...

Should be a nice boost.

Jamie

EDIT: Spelling

 

[ndee]

great, the stupid mobo doesn't support the Morgans. Oh well, gonna buy my bro' a CPU&Mobo Combo for his B-Day then

Thanks for the explanation Jamie.

 

[Mem]

I agree it`s worth the upgrade,it`ll help the GF4 Ti4200 get better FPS in gaming that`s for sure.

 

[BmXStuD]

YES! well i got a 1300mhz my last pc was a p2 350mhz so i say yes! and its duron

 

[BennyD]

man, i so need to upgrade

damn duron 900, 256mb pc133 (too cheap to run at 133, running at 100) and a geforce2mx 400

 

[TheCorm]

Originally posted by: ndee
great, the stupid mobo doesn't support the Morgans. Oh well, gonna buy my bro' a CPU&Mobo Combo for his B-Day then

Thanks for the explanation Jamie.

No problem...No bios update available then??

 

[nebula]

Does your mobo support T-Birds? That may be an option. You can get a 1.1GHz from Newegg for $28.50

 

[ndee]

Jamie: Nah, under the "CPU Support" list on the MSI page, they say that the newer Morgan cores, etc. aren't supported. I need to find a 100FSB 1.4GHz then. Oh well, gonna keep you guys updated

 

[BmXStuD]

morgan are 100fsb (200)! all durons are also.

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: BmXStuD
morgan are 100fsb (200)! all durons are also.

yeah, but the Morgan core isn't supported.

 

[TheCorm]

Originally posted by: nebula
Does your mobo support T-Birds? That may be an option. You can get a 1.1GHz from Newegg for $28.50

There are a few of these around but faster Tbirds tend to be 133mhz FSB...damn shame that it doesn't accept Morgans....I wonder why not...

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: TheCorm

Originally posted by: nebula
Does your mobo support T-Birds? That may be an option. You can get a 1.1GHz from Newegg for $28.50

There are a few of these around but faster Tbirds tend to be 133mhz FSB...damn shame that it doesn't accept Morgans....I wonder why not...

yeah, kinda not so happy. It's a MSI K7T Pro2a. I mean come on MSI, at least a 100mhz FSB CPU

 

[Brian48]

Does your friend's motherboard have the option to change the multipliers? I would definitely get the 1.3g Duron since it's so cheap, but there's an added advantage to this processor. If you unlock the multiplier via the L1 bridges, you can run this processor with a 133FSB at 10x133, 1300mhz instead of the default 13x100 which (in my opinion) is not really overclocking at all since the processor speed is the same. The increased in FSB will yield a VERY noticable increase in performance for him with little risk of problems.

 

[DancingBear]

You need to get any Athlon running 100Mhz FSB. Your board should support the T-bird without a problem. The previously suggested 1.1 from newegg is a good bet.

Check out my own perils with moving up from a Duron:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1002355&FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=

 

[grant2]

makes me glad i went with one of those pcchips m830l aka k7s5a's... the latest bios supports up to athlonxp 2600+!

 

[DT4K]

An Athlon T-bird 1000 or 1100 100FSB
should perform better than the Duron 1300 and be about the same price.
The fastest I found on pricewatch was a T-bird 1.3 for like $85.

Either way, Duron 1300 or T-bird 1100 would be nice little boost in speed for not much money.
Or you could wait and get him an Nforce2 board and get an XP 2200 pretty cheap.

 

[ndee]

The problem is I life in Switzerland and I can't find ANY 100FSB chip anymore. As I said, the Morgan core isn't supported on that Motherboard(MSI K7T Pro2a). I'm out of luck.

 

[nebula]

Maybe try posting in the FS/FT forum and see if anyone has a 1.1 T-Bird to sell. Shipping to Switzerland shouldn't be too bad for a <1lb package. Or maybe some kind soul would buy it from Newegg and send it to ya!

 

[jcwagers]

This may sound like a bad idea but.....have you actually tried the morgan core in the board? It would seem very possible to me that it would work ok even though it isn't "officially" supported. At most, you would be losing out on the SSE instructions that the morgan core contains. On some games it makes a difference but on most, I would doubt it. It should still recognize the chip as a 1.3 duron or a processor running at 1.3 ghz. Considering your options, you might as well try it and see what happens. I don't see that it would hurt anything. If it doesn't work, you can go back to the 850 for now and check on a different board a bit later.

jc