Which is better based on facts? I am not aware of the differences. What makes the two different besides brand?
From zdnet.com:
I don’t really know what the internal diff. is. Basically it appears that the Athlon outperforms the P4 at the same clock speed but the P4 is available at a higher clock speed then the p4. Even still it appears that the top end Athlon edges out the apx 400mhz greater clock speed P4. And is cheeper too.
I would suggest if you are looking into a high end system go w/ the top line Athlon and put the money you saved (from not buying the p4) to beef up the ram, HD, video card, etc.
whoops that link didn’t make it all the way, just copy and paste the whole thing.
GENERALLY SPEAKING
AMD K6 = Pentium / Pentium MMX (but not quite as good). These are old and generally not what you’re going to buy nowadays anyhow.
AMD Duron = Celeron (The AMD is an all around better CPU)
AMD Athlon (there are different ones) = Pentium 3/4 (The AMD is arguably better than either of the Intel offerings as well… but thats another story) Please ignore the “untapped potential” of the P4 sayers.
There can definetly be more discussion of the particulars if you wish, but that is the basics of it.
Basically, they are right…Athlon 1.2 with 266 front side bus outperforms Pentium IV 1.7. You can get a good motherboard and 1.2 Athlon for under 300 bucks now.
Also…Athlon motherboards , for the most part, support the new DDR Ram…which , if you are builing or buying a new computer you should get, it is just as cheap as regular PC133.
A hardcore, and I mean HARDCORE, Tribes(online computer game) forum I post at has the debate monthly…Everyone ends up with Athlon…just make sure you get a very good heat sink fan…the Athlon tends to run hot( it is also very susceptible to overclocking).
If you want links to benchmark test comparing various tests, I’ll log into that other forum and get the links for ya.
Seems like they are both good processors.
Actually, that should have been the AMD K6-2 and K6-3 is more or less equal the the P2.
And you’re right, the T-Bird and Duron are damn good processors.
I would most certainly take a 1.2 Athlon TBird over a 1.5 or so Pentium 4. The computing power these put out for the price is phenomenal.
You can find an enormous amount of information comparing the two on Tom’s Hardware.
I was thinking about asking the same question so thanks Poloin99 and everybody else.
My experience with AMD processors is this – dont buy one from a major computer comapny. If your going to get an AMD, you need to build it yourself. The major computer companies are well known for using cheep motherboards with their AMD systems. Intel’s chips do well with cheep motherboards, AMD’s chips do not.
In short, build it your self, and don’t go cheep on the MBD, buy a quality one.
The early Athlon motherboards were quite a story.
Athlon was a new slot type - slot A (there are now socket A boards as well). This represented the first time that motherboards would have to be expressly made for an AMD processor, rather than being able to make one that took either Intel or a competing AMD product.
Intel played extreme hardball with the motherboard vendors, many of whom delayed or cancelled plans to release a slot-A board because they essentially caved in to Intel. Many people believe that Intel threatened to cut off chip supplies for them or make it difficult for them to obtain them if they were to dare to make an Athlon board.
There was also the matter of Athlon requiring a new chipset - obviously Intel wasn’t going to make a chipset for the thing, and AMD released the Athlons with their own “irongate” chipset initially. But AMD didn’t want to be in the chipset business, and was waiting on VIA to produce the “real” one.
The result was that initially there were only a few Athlon boards available, using the interim “irongate” chipset. One of the few motherboard vendors willing to tell Intel to go get stuffed was FIC, whose motherboard appeared in almost all early Athlon systems. There would be better boards available eventually. Gigabyte and Asus also manufactured an early irongate-based board.
Asus, one of the best mobo vendors, did something very strange and rather chickenshit to avoid trouble with Intel - they sold their early Athlon boards only in plain-box “OEM” packaging rather than branded retail packaging, and didn’t acknowledge their existance on their website, though there was a “secret” URL where you could obtain BIOS updates and so on. Stores that sold the thing joked about the “no-name” Athlon board that everybody knew was from Asus.
I followed this because I was in the market at the time, and waited for the VIA KX133 chipset to come out. I got it on an Asus K7V board.
Another good resource ( since Tom of Tom’s Hardware has always sort of annoyed me 
):
- Tamerlane