Speed/performance comparison question

[Lawton]

Hey folks. At the moment I am running a 1gig slot T-bird on an MSI K7pro mobo. It's an AMD 751 chipset board that supports only 2x AGP, PC133, and ATA66. I have an opportunity to swap out this combo for an ECS K7S5A & a 1gig Duron. I'm wondering, though, if I'll really see any improvement in performance. I know I'll have 4x AGP over 2x, and that the memory controller is superior on the SiS735 chipset, but will the loss of CPU cache cancel out those enhancements?

 

[HappyNic]

on the k7s5a you would also have ata100 and ddr support, and on board LAN. my k7s5a seem to overclock duron pretty well, a 750mhz went to 1g, by switching the FSB to 133 instead of 100. if its 133fsb works for you then you'll be using at 1.3g mhz. you will notice your systems runing faster for sure if you're using DDR ram, even at 1g.

 

[rogue1979]

If it is free, go for it. The motherboard will allow you to update to DDR while utilizing sdram in the meantime. The Morgan core is based on the XP with data prefetch and a few other improvements, clock for clock it will almost match the older Thunderbird. Depending on the stepping, it will hit 1200-1350MHz. Plus the benefits of ATA100 and 4X AGP transfer speeds. None of these improvements by themselves would be noticable, but roll them all together and you will get a measurable performance boost.

 

[Soulkeeper]

the only two benefits in getting that new combo would be the fact that yur going socket A and you'll have ddr support

the performance increase from agp 2x to agp 4x will be minimal
the same can be said for ata66 to ata100

also using ddr in the system will probably never happen if you already own some pc133 mem
the performance boost prob wouldn't be large enough to make you wanna spend the cash
if you wanna go ddr get a newer ddr only motherboard

the duron will definately hold yur performance back
even with ddr in that system the duron would be outperformed by yur older athlon system in most/all things

i've seen those ecs sis 735 boards burn cpu's
they are cheap but if the deal is coming to you as a trade or something i guess the upgrade path might be worth it
it's up to you

you can find some pretty good boards in the newegg refurb section

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: Soulkeeper


the duron will definately hold yur performance back
even with ddr in that system the duron would be outperformed by yur older athlon system in most/all things

NOT TRUE! The 1GHz Duron is a morgan based on the XP core, the only differences being 64K vs. 256K of L2 cache and a ceramic package. The orginal thunderbird has a large performance advantage over the older spitfire core Duron. But the Morgan core is right on par with the older thunderbird in all performance areas even though it still only has 64K L2 cache. There are two steppings available for the Morgan, one tops out about 1200MHz and the other hits 1300-1375MHz on average. So the biggest advantage of this upgrade would be a noticable boost in cpu power if he overclocks it.

 

[Lawton]

Well, I've got a nice Volcano HS/F that I can put on the Duron. I'll get the O/C bios for the K7S5A and give it shot (once I install it).

Thanks for the responses!

 

[Soulkeeper]

not all performance areas
what i said was true, just their my opinions respect them
i will not argue with you

 

[Wind]

NOT TRUE! The 1GHz Duron is a morgan based on the XP core, the only differences being 64K vs. 256K of L2 cache and a ceramic package. The orginal thunderbird has a large performance advantage over the older spitfire core Duron. But the Morgan core is right on par with the older thunderbird in all performance areas even though it still only has 64K L2 cache. There are two steppings available for the Morgan, one tops out about 1200MHz and the other hits 1300-1375MHz on average. So the biggest advantage of this upgrade would be a noticable boost in cpu power if he overclocks it.

If u r running application like gaming (uses a lot of L2 cache). The Duron suffered compare to Athlon. Wht Soulkeeper said is true "certain application". But I still feel is right to swap the combo. Socket A provide u w/ a better upgrade path.

 

[rogue1979]

Well, if you won't take my word for it, read this Morgan vs. Thunderbird

There are at least a half dozen other reviews that all show the same thing. Like I said, performance is very close in all categories.