Athlon and Athlon T-bird: What's the difference?

All right, so upgrade time is coming again, and I just want to make certain of one thing: I check out motherboards, and sometimes they say something like “Supports Duron up to 900 Mhz, Athlon up to 1.3 Ghz”. Other times, it would say something like “Supports Duron up to 900 Mhz, Athlon Thunderbird up to 1.3 Ghz”.

From what I can tell, both Athlon’s and Athlon T-birds fit into the same sort of socket on the motherboard. Does this mean, then, that the two processors might as well be interchangeable? I know that there may be issues with the Front-Side Bus and all that (sometimes it’s 200 Mhz FSB, sometimes it’s 266 FSB), but beyond that… is there any reason why an Athlon and Athlon T-bird can’t be popped into the same motherboard?

All pending on the BIOS version of your motherboard. Essentially they should all be interchangeable if you’ve got the latest greatest up to date BIOS version for your mobo. Only problem is that some mobo’s BIOS’es have stopped being updated and only support up to a certain speed processor. If your unsure what mobo/proc to buy feel free to e-mail me and I’ll make some recommendations.