PIII or AMD Athlon for W2k?

[David2k]

I am a business user and don't play many (if any) games but I regularly bring my current system to it's knees. It is a very old 200 Mhz MMX system with a max 64 megs ram. I have already decided W2k will be my new system (I am tired of rebooting all the time in 98SE).

My question is one of stability. The AMD Athlon's look enticing for the price performance but I am hesitant because of unknown stablity issues.

If YOU were to base your purchase on stability and performance, would you choose AMD Ahtlon or a PIII? But business uses, the reviews I have read don't seem to support the P4's at this point.

 

[abracadabra1]

Athlon for speed, stability, performance, and reliability.
Works wonders in Win2K.

 

[cirrus1]

No matter what you choose it is a good idea to get a good amount of ram. 256 and above is W2K's sweet spot.

 

[David2k]

Cirrus,

Thanks. I have already decided 256MB is my minimum RAM.

Do you run W2k on your Athlon system?

 

[robg1701]

Using Whistler Pro Beta 1, so you can call it win2k in a way, on my Athlon 500 and K7 Pro. I shut it down to put some more ram in it(128MB -> 256MB) approximately 6days 12hours 47minutes and 56seconds ago

In the last week, i have put it through many hours of Q3, and DF3, installed a few apps, done some photo editing, and generally beat shnitz out of it. Hope this answers your question

 

[David2k]

robg1701

Thanks. It sounds like it is working nicely for you.

 

[BigToque]

I would say to go for a P3.

While it does cost more for an equally clocked CPU, you can get a rock solid chipset by going with either a BX or 815E motherboard.

Dont forget that the P3 also uses SSE which is used by a fair number of applications which can help with the speed of the system.

 

[robg1701]

Ok, here are some further thoughts/experiences. I appreciate some poeple will not let go of having 'intel inside', and if a pentium 3 performs better at the tasks your planning on doing then maybe thats the deciding factor, though thats doubtfull IMHO because you can get extra frequency for your mullah if you go athlon and this will reduce any shortfall against the lower speed P3 in certain apps, and extend the lead in many others.

Regardless of the above, as you obviously know about all this and are more interested in stability at this point, I would say that the athlon platform has definately developed in maturity in the last 16 months or so since its introduction.

I bought an athlon system as soon as they were available. I then had a MSI 6167, and it was every bit as sturdy as my K7 Pro is. When the system was about 7 months old back in April, i started to have troubles in games, particularly Q3/UT as it would lock up frequently after a few hours uptime. All the signs pointed to vid card troubles, a TNT2 Ultra at the time. After a miserably failed attempt at fixing the problem on-site (it then crashed after 10 seconds in-game), the comp was taken in for 'servicing'. When it returned, it had a new SDR Geforce, as they no longer used TNT2 Ultra i had and probably didnt have any left in stockpile. They also replaced the mobo, and as they no longer used the 6167 so i got a K7 Pro, possibly because the original would for certain have disliked the geforce. While they were at it, they gave me a week 41 instead of a week 30 Athlon 500 and replaced the ram, despite the fact i doubt that either were damaged, probably just a precaution. The reason i tell you all this game related stuff is that despite all those changes regarding the problems, the system never had a stability problem in windows, it was like a rock. I went for weeks at a time without crashes, in win98SE, although obviously i rebooted once every day or two cause its not the most memory efficient OS

Getting back to the current socketA platform, i would like to point out that anandtech itself is served largely by 1GHz T-Birds on MSI K7T Pro's. If your looking for stability, im sure youll find many others on the board like me that will give kudos to MSI.

My personal opinion only.

 

[robg1701]

Oh, and as for you asking about Cirrus1 running win2k, i think i can answer that for him as a yes. see THIS thread for more details. Oh, you might also try asking in there how many of em are running athlons

PS - yes, this is the same boot i was talking about in there. Youll know what i mean when you get there

 

[StuckMojo]

im a software developer, and i have been using an athon for well over a year now. im on my second one, a 1GHz, and i haven't had any problems since i very first got win2k. after a couple of weeks for stable drivers to come out, i have had no troubles other than some game related hassles, but it is debatable if they were athlon, vid card, or win2k in general issues.

the trick is to ask people what a stable configuration is. my 2 asus athlon boards have had no problems in win2k, but my other asus board with a celeron in it has been nothing but trouble, when combined with a geforce.

anyway, i would recommend the following:

asus a7v
t-bird 1GHz
256M of micron or other brand name PC133 ram
300+ watt power supply (this is very important)
geforce 2 MX
(get the registry patch from amd for athlon+win2k agp probs)
sb live value
linksys 10/100 nic
maxtor 7200rpm udma66 (or 100) 20 (or more) GB drive
cd burner or dvd rom

you should be able to get all of this in a nice case for about $750-850 (depending on wether you get a burner or not). the price/performance ratio is just so much better with an athlon, you really can't justify a p3 (especially since they are slower)

 

[xpaf077]

If you want stability and speed,go with
the Msi KT7Pro2A. you'll have the option of 133mhz FSB
as a bonus!!

 

[BearX00]

I just upgraded to an Athlon 800Mhz with an ABit KT7 RAID mobo, 256 Megs of ram, And since i have installed it i have had nothing but good to report, the system is stable, and running extremely fast ( going from a p2 300 that is ) I also upgraded components like my HDD ( IBM 75gxp - 30 Gig model - amazing drive ). So i dont see any real reason that one must go with an intel chip because the AMD's are definately stable enough to handle whatever you throw at them.

 

[G14]

I'd stay clear of VIA chipsets if you are going to go with AMD. I recently bought a Tbird 800 with a KT133 MB and I couldn't get ANY 3d apps to run it at all. If you are going to get a VIA chipset and use win2k I'd download this reg patch from Microsofts web site. It didn't do me any good and I ended up selling the computer but it may help you.

 

[loosbrew]

im running a tbird 900 with a kt7raid oced to 1050 rock solid. win2k has never locked up on me after the initial 2 day burn in period. all of my bios settings are set to optimal and i try to get every last umph of performance out of it and still never had a crahs. i even have two chips of very generic no name brand that iam oc'ing and i have still yet to crash win2k. ive gone maybe th most 2 weeks with it on without a reboot and couldnt be happier. my HDD on the other hand...if you are goinf to get an abit i would recommend against a MAxtor Diamond max...it seems that abit and Maxtor dont get along, so i think im gonna upgrade to a ibm 75gxp soon.

just my 2 cents


loooo

 

[David2k]

Paf077,
Actually, the Msi KT7Pro2A is exactly the board I have been considering.

Thanks.

 

[SemperFi]

I am running A7V thunderbird 700 OC to 800 I couldn't get 2000 to boot at higher speed. I can't believe the difference from 98. Dual booting 2000 and 98 now. I hardly ever boot to 98 anymore. In the process of getting Linux up.

If it were my money I would save some of it and buy the better processor AMD. But that is a biased opinion.

I am wondering if I can get 900mhz in 2000 if I do the mod posted at Tom's Hardware. Has anyone tried it?

 

[MstrChase]

I too run an Athlon ( A 600 overclocked to 690 and it stabble as all get out), as for mainboards Gigabyte all the way. I use the GA-7IXE and love it.

 

[rootaxs]

here's another clincher.. if anyone remembers. AMD always had the Windows logo printed on the chip itself - How's that for compatibility?

 

[Dan]

David2k: Don't fall for Intel propaganda. I've run a Duron 700 @ 1083MHz for 3 months using Win2K. Before my current CPU I was using a Duron 600 at 900MHz. There are no compatibility issues between AMD and Win2K. Period.