New processor, duron, athlon xp, or thunderbird???

Brackus2

Member
Nov 1, 2003
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Hey everyone,

I have just finished readind anand's review of lower end processors withthe lower xp's, some celerons, the duron 1.6, and the pentium 4 1.8...

And anyway, I always knew celeron was sh*t, but I didnt know it was that sh*t. I am still rocking my hurting computer with a 1.2 thunderbird underclocked to 1.1 and it still freezes now even ifI open Kazaa...

Anyway, I have never even considered a Duron in a while, but if it consistently stays even with a pentium 1.8 (duron 1.6) then thats awesome.

My question is, what would u get with an A-Open, AK73(pro) which supposedly cannot handle athlon xp's like I wish it would but ah well, I only have 256 mb of pc133 ram anyway, I just really wanna get all my use out of my geforce 4ti, as its the most expensive cpu part ive ever bought, and for the last year my cpu has froze repeatedly due to a sh*te computer. Anyway,

Would u get a Duron with this motherboard?? or maybe another thunderbird 1.2-1.4??? How are the prices of these in comparison, I always figured Duron's would be pretty cheap...

Anyway, now i look and my main vendor www.canadacomputers.com is only selling a 1.333 thunderbird for $73 Canadian, I am not really looking for anything more than $50 unless it is new, but a 1.4-1.8 duron would be great, I think... what do you all think???

Thanks,

Dustin
 

beatle

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2001
5,661
5
81
I'd find out why your current computer is crashing. What are your temps? If they're not too high, try resetting everything in bios to defaults and run memtest86. If you don't get any errors, run prime95 in windows. If that doesn't crash, reload your os. Unless you're using Kazaa lite, you've probably got a lot of spyware on your pc thanks to Kazaa.

If your temperatures are high, get a can of compressed air and blow everything out, especially your CPU hsf. Upgrading when you have 1 or more faulty parts can be disapponting at best, and extremely frustrating at worst.
 

myocardia

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2003
9,291
30
91
Dustin, assuming your crashes aren't heat-related, then there is a very good chance that it isn't stable because you don't have a big/bad enough power supply. It probably never crashes when you run the processor at 1.0 Ghz, does it? I'm not sure about Canada, but we can buy Antec TruePower power supplies here for around $50. If the cleaning doesn't work, I think you should get a powerful power supply, then you'd actually be able to OVERclock your Athlon, instead of underclocking it.
 

Brackus2

Member
Nov 1, 2003
48
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my cmoputer slowly has been messing up forever, its a long story, but anyway, it kept overheating, then i cleaned the fan, then it started overheating again, i bought artic silver 3, that workedwell oncpu temps for a while but then didnt, so i underclocked it, and then bought a volcano 9, but it still overheated eventually, its as low as my motherboard will let it, my cpu freezes now sometimes after reboot, but still, at that time the air coming outta the psu isnt very warm like it usually is if my cpu has been running for a while, anyway, i really dont know what is p, dont wanna waste my money upgrading..

How do u reset ur bios? and is it dangerous, should i make a backup something on disk???

and it is kazaa lite, but ive had all versions some time or another...

Anwya, anyone still have an idea for processor if it really is indeed the processor that is bad???
 

Brackus2

Member
Nov 1, 2003
48
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so everyone agrees that even for a poor student that a duron would be a bad idea, or might not even work on my board???
 

Brackus2

Member
Nov 1, 2003
48
0
0
sorry, I just wanna try one more time for a couple of other responses... I am really liking the duron idea, especially since I am on quite a budget and that anandtech article really made it look alright, but I am still questioning it, just for things Ive heard, anyone wanna put this to rest, or maybe say that my 1.1 thunderbird is better than a 1.6 duron???

Thanks,

Dustin
 

aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
4,335
1
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I really would try to fix your current rig before you upgrade. Like the posters above mentioned, run memtest86 and see if your hardware is unstable. Let us know what your temps are and what your voltage readouts are etc. A newer athlon CPU won't help if your mobo is a fubar'ed POS.
 

Grimner

Member
Nov 12, 1999
176
1
76
You seem to be describing a gradual increase in your CPU temps?
Two questions:

How dusty and/or messy are the insides of your computer?
How did you apply the Arctic Silver?


AK73Pro

Since the motherboard doesn't take DDR RAM, I'd say you stick with your current CPU and start looking hard for answers to your problem - slow increase of temperatures.


Someone somewhere on these forums mentioned something about a cat's hairs making his cooler nice and warm...