Coppermine or Athlon.

[RoGuE]

I recently purchased an MSI-6195/K7Pro, and it has been great. 'Super Bypass' is enabled by default, and I got a greater speed increase switching from a K7M to this board than a 50MHz CPU increase.

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System 1:
Micro-Star K7Pro (MS-6195) Motherboard, AMD Athlon 550 @ 900MHz , 256MB PC-100 CAS2 SDRAM, Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead Max, Matrox Rainbow Runner G-Series, Creative Soundblaster Live! Player 1024, Promise FastTak66 RAID Controller (not currently active), 22GB IBM ATA/66 HDD, Panasonic SR-8584 6x DVD-ROM, Yamaha CRW8424 IDE CDR/RW, Panasonic SuperDisk LS-120, Netgear FA310TX 100m/bit PCI NIC. Windows 98SE / Windows 2000 Pro (Dual Boot).

[DuRaNgO[MU]]

actually, if you're thinking about o/c'ing, then the athlon is not cheaper as you will need to purchase one of the pcb cards to adjust it's speed as well ($50.00us or so)
jim

[paulcs]

Of course if you go for the Coppermine, and availability has improved, your ASUS P3B-F *should* support it. You save about $150 right there. In a few weeks, that may negate any price difference between the PIII and the Athlon and simply your upgrade considerably. As you know, it's easier and a lot less stressful to pop in a CPU than installing a motherboard. The PIII 700 MHz has begun to drop below $500.00, and it should keep dropping. You might be able to pick it up for a song at the end of March.

And you get to avoid those screwy VIA drivers.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Greebe]

Fizzy, MSI had a bad name in the SS7 market but this time around they're the best/most stable Athlon MB out. It is the only one I'll reccommend (6167).
Asus on the other hand, has fantastic BX based boards... but that K7M is by far the worst POS they've ever come out with in recient times! If you decide on an Athlon based system and must go Asus, then please wait til they have something else out and is tried true tested.

Peaches

[PurpleHaze]

Paul, that's a good point. Plugging-and-playing is nice... Is the 800mhz CUmine a 100mhz fsb dealy?

And, Yeah, Greebe... I -like- the athlon, I really do, i just don't know where it's headed....

Maybe I should have two systems... o_O

=fiZi

[paulcs]

I think the PIII 800 comes in both the 100 MHz and 133 MHz flavors.

They're quite pricey, $350-$400 more than the 700, and I suspect their overclocking potential probably isn't very good.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 01 March 2000).]

[Wombat]

Are those chips even available yet?

[Hamlet]

Athlon. For sure. I've never had a more stable system. No matter what I do to it, it's allmost impossible to kill. And, it's faster.

Besides, if nothing else applies to your decision, get an athlon just to **** with intel. They need some competition, and AMD is on their way. But they do need some help.

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Athlon 500@650 Rock Stable (500 Core, 4ns)/MSI 6167/128mb/7200rpm/SB128/G400Max/Win98/RH6.0

[paulcs]

I've seen the PIII 800 advertised, but who knows if anyone actually has them in stock.

Paul
paulcs

[JoeDredd]

Ok i have been converted, AMD ATHLON here i come!!, will have to use my 500e@690 as a backup puter!!!

:0

[Nuno]

http://www.cpureview.com/art_k7p290200_a.html

And after all you can get an Athlon 700 for less than a PIII600. Kinda makes you wander.

Oh, wait. Intel stated they have the celeron to compete against the Athlon. That must be it.

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 01 March 2000).]

[PurpleHaze]

Well I do think the Athlon itself is a better design... it's more of an up-to-date processor than any p6-core hack-on. But I'd feel real funny if I had an Alpha right now - that was a good chip, too, and look what happened to DEC.


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Ami Y. Koriuchi - foxyviolet@hotmail.com
Asus P3BF 1003.A - P3-500 - G400Max
256MB 6NS - 75 GB of 10k RPM SCSI UW

Hello... my name is ami. and this is my signature.

[Nuno]

Well, not quite an alpha, but the Athlon runs on the same bus specs, the alpha EV6. Quite more eficient than Intel´s GTL+ or something like that.

[Brian R.]

What ever you decide to do, wait as long as you can. CPU prices are going to continuously drop, and fast, in the near future.

[cpld005]

Get whatever you want. I'm going to wait at least 6 more months before I do any upgrades (maybe Matrox will have annouced a new product by then ). Whatever is the best, most stable and reasonably priced at that time is when I will make a descision as to what way to go. Athlon looks great, but then again so does Willamette, It's too early to tell. Also I wouldn't consider buying anything that is under 1GZ at the moment. I would expect to see a huge jump in performance, not a small one that didn't require high overclocks to achieve a noticable difference.