Athlon 700 Voltage?? with RANT

[diskman]

Ok... I decided to buy an Athlon 700, Tyan motherboard, 350 (AMD)ATX, and a stick of 64MB/133 memory. This board does an auto voltage and auto CPU select and seems to run linux and 98. I was wondering if anyone knew the voltage settings for this chip so I can double check the MB detection. Now I remember why I dislike AMD so much. ARGH. My INTEL 233 will sit and run all damn month with Seti/Fileserving/KDE/Kernels and misc messing with. This friggin AMD POS will get as far as SETI/2 KVTs/1 Kcontrol panel and only 1 netscape before is locks up tight. I am getting sick of waiting for a 30 GB to FSCK . :mad:

I have worked on TONS of systems at work. We purchased 5 AMD 533 systems for customers (since AMD was cheaper than Intel), and EVERYONE was claiming AMD is faster, we thought it was cool. Well, we finally replaced the last of the original 5 CPUs with Intels and it fixed the intermittent lockups, windows not shutting down, and the PC rebooting whenever windows or Linux was doing something processor intensive. I will agree that the Athlon is faster (faster than what?) but if it will hard lock after 2 hours of slight beatings, then to me it's not faster. Between the FSCKs and reboots, my Intel333 Celery is catching up to the Athlon for SETI packets processed. </RANT>

For sale: AMD Athlon 700 MHZ CPU. FAST! (I guess) - Tyan Athlon Motherboard - 350 Watt PS and fans. Make offer (Should be a good one since I guess AMD is the s**t right?).

Latah!
Abit BP6:dual Intel 533(typing this on) - Asus XV97:Intel 233(Linux Masq Server) - Asus P2B:Intel 400 Celery(Wifes PC) - Asus P5S-B:AMD 350(Sons) (locks all the time) - Asus P3BF:PIII500(My mess around PC).

Intel system lockups: Not many in 2 years.
New AMD system lockups: 5 in 5 hours in linux and 98.

[Tiger]

Vcc core 1.75 volts nominal, 1.85 volts max.
At 700Mhz the chip draws 23 amps.

Since most instability problems in systems are caused by unstable motherboards, and Tyan doesn't make an AMD cerified, AMD chipset mobo for the slot A processor, I'd guess the mobo is a POS, not the chip.

AMD approved Slot A motherboards. (http://www1.amd.com/athlon/mbl/index/1,1503,,00.html)

64M of memory running Windows/Linux? Your kidding right?

[ 03 February 2001: Message edited by: Tiger ]

[CMonster]

"I have worked on TONS of systems at work. We purchased 5 AMD 533 systems for customers (since AMD was cheaper than Intel), and EVERYONE was claiming AMD is faster, we thought it was cool."

The problem there is easy to identify: these were probably AMD K6-2 CPUs and not Athlons. Because only the K6-2 came in a 533mhz and these CPUs were pushed near the upper limit of what that core architecture could do. Not to mention that the old socket 7 motherboard was pushed to the limit on so-called "super seven" 100mhz FSB (97mhz in the case of the 533mhz chip) It is also important to note that K6-2s have a weaker FPU than comparable Intel chips. Nevertheless, the K6-2 was a fine chip but stability depended largely on the motherboard and system builder.

As for your Athlon experience: Your board probably needs a BIOS update because Athlons really do smoke PIIIs that the same speed.

[diskman]

Ok.. I am sorry for the rant.. I *might* get the Gigabyte AMD certified mobo off pricewatch Monday.. Heh.. 64 Megs.. I know.. It's all I have for that PC unless I swipe some from my others but it actually doesnt run that bad with K and Netscape/Opera really. 98 kinda sucked but I wasnt planning on playing games in 98.

23 amps? Umm.. That sounds a tad high. I suppose I will give this one more try with a real motherboard. I was kinda hesitant about the Tyan but the price was right. Any suggestions on a reasonably priced stable mobo for this?

:(

[RageAHolic]

I've got a Slot-A 700Mhz Athlon and an ASUS K7V and I've had NO problems at all.

Don't know what the prices are like, but it's been stable for me.

[JBrian]

Duron 600/ASUS A7V here and no problems at all. Also got a AMD 486 running at 133mhz! Stable as can be. The durons dual booting Win98 and Slack with 64megs of generic no name Fry's special memory and I dont think its locked up once. If you can swing it get a new ASUS board. They're well worth it.
~Jeff

[Sweede]

a freind of mine bought an AMD pc a while back, worked semi decent (as well as windows 98 could run on a system).

then he bought a high end teac cd writer. installed it and the dvd drive no longer works.

installed windows 2000, no luck, thought it might be a shoddy motherboard, bought a new giga-byte AMD certified motherboard, some problems and a few new ones..

1. RAM no longer worked, had to buy new RAM.
(he's using my high quaility Micron PC133 on a 100mhz bus which he has various paging errors and memory errors, missed bits etc, while i use his generic pc100 ram @ 155mhz, on my intel board, with 0 problems, memory errors or paging errors)

2. AGP Video no longer works, had to use a PCI card.

3. Sound card ONLY works on the shared ISA/PCI slot.

4. Modem has TONS of problems that didnt exist on the old generic motherboard

5. DVD drive still doesnt work

Talked to an AMD buddy of mine that does some consulting to AMD's division in chicago and come to find out that the list of compatible hardware for AMD chipsets is worse than the SunOS Hardware Compatibility list ! (i.e., only sun hardware works on sun). He has one of those brand new 260$ AMD motherboard with onboard RAID and his elsa geforce GTS doesnt work on it, he has to jumper the board to detect AGP as a PCI slot to get it to work.


my freind with the AMD (above problem guy) asked "what should i do now?"

I said "return the gigabyte AMD board for an Intel board and get a P!!!"

the past 3 weeks, he's spent about.. 200$ on new parts, and now he's going to have to spend another 250-300$ on new ram and video card.

all because dumbass AMD chipsets have a problem with writers and dvd drives.

His hardware at fault? nope , put all of his hardware on my totally kickass Soyo VIA chipset board with a p3 533 oc'd to 620 (155mhz system bus, ram running the same).
no problems, no errors, no lockups. put the same hardware on my other (soyo), board, no problems.

His OS at fault? Nope. Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Linux (drake), all had problems with the Cd Writer and DVD drive.
the devices where there, but mount -t auto /dev/cdrom2 /mnt/cdrom2 would give some wacked out error message (you know, block device doesnt exist or whatever).
but mounting /dev/cdrom (the teac burner) works.


Buy Intel.

[ 04 February 2001: Message edited by: Sweede ]

[Tiger]

Just because the mobo is AMD certified doesn't mean you won't get a bad one.

Yes, Athlons require good memory, power supplies, chipsets, etc.... Wanna talk about the latest Intel FUBAR's, the P-IV, the 1G and up PIII's, the 810 chipset, etc...? Not to mention Rambus. :rolleyes:

[MGP]

Sweede,

I hate to disagree with ya, but the AMD Athlon boards can be VERY stable and there aren't any more incompatibilities with hardware than there are for Intel based systems.

They ARE totally different beasts though. I've built a ton of different Athlon systems in the past year (ten or so at last count, mostly for friends) and they are all rock solid stable with Win98SE, Win2K and Linux. But setting them up is definitely different than setting up an Intel system. Everything from power supply, memory, cooling, you name it.

Most people that have trouble with AMD systems try to set them up just like their last Intel system. That doesn't work. Most of the time they make some common mistakes (like a cheap power supply, not enough cooling, etc.) or installed drivers wrong, things like that and that causes problems. Those things can be easily fixed. I've fixed a BUNCH of systems like your friends...

Having said that, there are plenty of POS Athlon motherboards -- and POS PIII motherboards too. I am sure you can think of a few yourself that you wouldn't recommend to your worst enemy. The best thing anyone can do is read up on what works and what doesn't, whether you are building an Athlon system or a PIII system. There are good ones and bad ones for each CPU. And the good ones for both are indeed very good, the bad ones are like a social disease that won't go away... :eek:

[mindwarp.out]

I just love the fact that because of sweede's inability to do any type of research on what he buys that he blames AMD... sure if you buy a Slot A or 1st generation motherboard, it won't be as smooth. Needless to say, if you buy a socket A or a Abit KT7 or Asus K7T you are going to not run into any problems. I have seen plenty of extremely stable systems running the Abit board without a hitch. But you would, rather than saying "hey, I bought **** hardware.. why isnt this working", blame it on AMD. There is no doubt that the K6 and Slot A athlons all had some problems. Socket A has remedied most of that, and if you buy a good brand board (like asus or abit) I am sure you will find that there will be absolutely no problems. There are several known issues with the original athlons and AGP cards.. do some research and you would have found that.. The currently athlons that are socket A are as good, if not better, than their intel counterparts.

Mindwarp