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Is this Duron thing all it's cracked up to be?

G

gtd2000

Platinum Member
I took the plunge with the AMD K6-2 and realised later on I had been duped by a marketing ploy.....The K6-2 was a great value CPU but nowhere near as good as the Celeron..Since then I have been routing for Intel...however I do like to give the underdog a chance..😉
I've been looking with interest at the Duron 600 O/C'd to 900Mhz and it seems like a good deal.....i mean I can get a motherboard and CPU for the price of a PIII700 which will probably O/C to 933Mhz..?
Anybody got any horror stories about the Duron CPU's or is it really such a great deal?
I'm currently running a PIII450 @ 600Mhz on a BH6 but feel that I may be slipping a bit in the performance stakes now....😉
Suggestions for mobo combo's welcome 🙂
 
Well, I am most impressed with my Abit KT7 and Duron 650 chip (at 900mhz right now). Everything installed smoothly, with none of the pains of the older socket 7 (you know, patch this, patch that, yada yada yada). I drew in the L1 traces with a sharp pencil, and now I have total Bios control of multiplier. Performance-wise it smokes my Celeron 566 running at 892mhz. Only issue is how warm it runs, thankfully I have a few spare heatsinks laying about...
 
The menu is very reminiscent (sp) of my BF6 board, so yes, it does work basically the same way.

I don't like the MSI Bios as much, it seems to allow less control over the system, at least on my BXMaster.
 
I'm just reading the CPU/Processors and Overclocking section........seems that it's not a simple process like my C300A and PIII450 overclocking experiences...hmmmm?
The section is full of Duron and motherboard overclocking problems....🙁
 

You didn't mention which version of the BH6 you have, but if I were you I'd just get a P3 700 or 750 from the cB0 stepping and overclock it as best you can. A BX board @ 133 MHz is a pretty powerful platform.

Otherwise go Tbird 700-800 and maybe the ASUS A7V, since the Duron and Tbird are pretty close in price.

 
I've got an early revision of the Duron and she'll run 1gHz with 1.85v, but whats surprising is the little difference in heat from 650mHz stock. The Duron are everything they were promised to be.
 
I love my MSI k7t, however, if you're a big overclocker it's not the board for you (Yet). I'm sure they'll release a bios upgrade soon that will allow you to overclock the multiplier in the bios, but for now you can't.
 
As of now, the only KT133 motherboards that allow you to overclock a Duron/Thunderbird easily are the Abit KT7 and the Asus A7V. The former has a softmenu like BIOS while the latter requires messing around with dip switches. However, the latter will fit more varieties of HSFs since the capacitors around the socket are re-allocated elsewhere in this plug-in board.
 
oh, the k6-2 sucked. i got a celeron.

but the duron thing is as "cracked" up (joke on cores) as it is. the duron is faster than the celeron.
 
Duron at regular clock speed whups the Celeron pretty badly. But if you already have a FCPGA board that will take a nice PIII, do that.
 
Aside from the overclocking abilities of the Duron - how have you guys found the stability of your systems? Any niggling problems?
I'm not looking for an Intel vs AMD arguement...my K6-2 system was very stable indeed...just any type of incompatibilty etc....any particular advantage with the Duron as opposed to the Intel options?
Is it really worth going from a PIII450 @ 600Mhz to a Duron 600 @ 900Mhz?
 
I don't see much difference from a P!!!600E to P!!!800EB.
The answer to your question may be pretty muddy.
 
Did I mention the Duron cracks RC5 equal to a full-blown Athlon? I leave mine on 850mHz and it cracks at 2.83MKey/sec. Far more than a C850, at 2.34MKey/sec.
 
My Thunderbird 900 & MSI K7T PRO with a overclocked Geforce2 MX have no problem with stability,rock solid,also I`m a gamer so stability is very important to me,best board & processor I ever brought(so far).


🙂
 
I wouldn't expect blazing improvements. You'll get better performance in a stock system by going to a cas2 memory, using a top notch hard drive, and tweaking your OS. I went from a stock slot A athlon 600 to my current setup. I notice improvement but I could have lived without it. I mostly did it for the experience of building the system. I love to tweak also and stock fab systems usually do not allow that. Benching, tweaking, and overclocking is a lot of fun if that's your bag. Upping the cpu power benefits mostly those applications that are cpu dependent. Spreadsheets and graphics (video and imaging) are two off the top of my head.
 
I am almost ready for the task. Duron 600, Abit KT7 w/raid. 2 128 pc133 ram , alpha fan. Now radio shack guy dosent know what silver base compound is. They gave me silicon base. Does it realy matter? Also, suggestion for case and power supply would be greatly appriciated.

Just wondering how do I apply the compound in a way that I could later remove the heatsink/fan (just in case the pencil gets erased or system instability?
Please exuse my spelling, I simply have a disability w/it.
Thanks
 
People gave me grief when I used to use JB Weld for heatsink compound. However, a razor thin layer was able to do what thick silicon-based compound couldn't. Anymore its cheaper just to whip out a razor-thin layer of silicon-based compound as they all seem pretty identical in use.
 
Beware of the Duron/KT7 combo! If the processor is post week 31 of production, or the bios on the motherboard is earlier than 1.02 then your setup may not boot. 🙁 If you've got a pencil handy you can connect the 4th bridge on the L7 to make it boot, or if you have a good friend with a Thundy you could install it in there to boot and update the bios.
Basically at week 31 of production, AMD decided to up the needed voltage of the duron slightly, and being that the KT7 detects by itself, and the settings are done in the bios, it thinks "ahh duron, better set it to x.xv" which is incorrect on pre 1.02 bioses.
Just thought you should know!
 
No problems here. A7V 1.01 w/ Duron 600@900. ROCK SOLID. Never crashes even when left on for weeks and continously gamed on.

Do not use a Golden Orb for cooling. If you want troubles and broken cpu parts, that is the single way to make your AMD experience an unpleasent one. Get the Alpha HS and Fan. This cooler consistantly gets the best performance in shootouts everywhere.
 
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