Difference between revisions of "Athlon Motherboards"

Revision as of 19:58, 18 February 2013

Athlon consists of a wide range of processors, starting with the original Athlon for Slot A. It later evolved into Athlon XP, Athlon64 and Athlon II. All Athlons were made by AMD

Slot A

Slot A is the oldest platform for the Athlon. It came in cassette form very similar to Intel's Slot 1 CPU's and is the successor to AMD's Super 7 offerings. It offers much better performance compared to it's Super 7 predecessor, but also consumes more power. It ranges from 500MHz to around 1000MHz. Basically 2 different cores were made: The original Athlon which had cache mounted onto the cassette similar to Intel's Pentium 2 and Intel's Katmai, and the Athlon Thunderbird which had it's cache on the die similar to Intel's Coppermine and AMD's own K6-III. Slot A was superseded by the popular Socket A platform.

Slot A was typically made in ATX formfactor and usually sported PCI, ISA and an AGP slot. To my knowledge, no AT formfactor Athlons were ever made though they might exist.

Socket A

Socket A was a very popular CPU socket which was produced from 2000 to around 2003 and ranges from 600MHz all the way to 2333MHz (or 2.333GHz), though higher clock speeds were achievable with overclocking. There were basically 4 different CPU's made for Socket A, ranging from the original Thunderbird (which was also made in Slot A configuration), the Palomino (which was the first Athlon XP), the Thoroughbred (which was made on a smaller manufacturing process) and the Barton (which was basically a thoroughbred with double the amount of L2 cache).

A budget version of Athlon was also made, appearing at first as the Duron (which ran from 600MHz to 1800MHz, all of them Socket A) and later as a Sempron (which was basically a renamed Athlon XP at first). While Duron was marketed with it's original clock speed, Athlon XP was the first Athlon to use a PR rating (identified by a "+"-sign right next to the speed rating), ranging from 1600+ (which is a 1400MHz CPU) to the 3200+ (which is either a 2200MHz CPU on a 400MHz FSB or a 2333 MHz part on a 333MHz FSB (the latter one being more uncommon)).

Athlon and Athlon XP use substantially more power compared to the Pentium 3 and maxes out at around 75W (without overclocking) while the hottest Pentium 3's max out at around 35W and while usually Athlon and Athlon XP draws power from the 5V lines, Pentium 4 draws it's power from the 12V line. This is important as modern PSU's typically don't support large power draws from the 5V line anymore. Whats also important is that all Socket A Athlons were manufactured without an IHS, meaning the bare die could be damaged when improperly installing a CPU cooler, possibly resulting in cracks in the die, possibly killing the CPU in the process. So being careful while installing a CPU cooler is important. Make sure you don't install the CPU cooler the wrong way around. Even though Athlon XP CPU coolers were designed to deal with the high heat output of Athlon and Athlon XP, as Socket A has the same dimensions as Socket 370, Athlon XP coolers can typically be installed on Socket 370 (and sometimes even Socket 7, provided no motherboard components are in the way).

The first Athlons use SDRAM while the later ones use DDR-SDRAM. No DDR2 Athlon XP motherboards were ever made. No PCI-E Athlon XP motherboards were ever made. Only the very latest Athlon XP boards have SATA connectors. Athlon and Athlon XP motherboards typically draw power from the 5V line, resulting in possible incompatibility with modern PSU's which often don't provide enough power on the 5V lines anymore. All Socket A boards come with PCI slots. Only some of the oldest boards come with ISA slots. Almost all Socket A boards come with either AGP 4x or AGP 8x (some Socket A motherboards without an AGP slot were made though). Socket A was made in the middle of the capacitor plague, which resulted in many Socket A boards having bulged capacitors. Bulged capacitors have to be replaced or it will cause system instability and possibly the death of hardware components.