First CPU to use socket A?

[mirado.kelly]

Can someone please tell me what was the first AMD Athlon to use "Socket A"
Also is it correct to say that Athlon K7 was the competitor to Pentium 2 and used "Slot A"

The reason I ask for this information is I am gathering resources and images of various sockets and processors. So far ive been using google and wikopedia, but if anyone knows of any other historical hardware sites that would be apreciated.

[foxyloxley]

but if anyone knows of any other historical hardware sites

I do believe that Nihil's 'store room' could well qualify under that term

also do you intend to 'use / distribute' said research
because I like reading 'historical' tales about IT

[mirado.kelly]

Thanks, but where do I find Nihil's 'store room', I realize Nihil is a member but unaware of any store room of his, please bear in mind I dont visit antionline very often.

also do you intend to 'use / distribute' said research
because I like reading 'historical' tales about IT

Im sorry, the intent of my inquirey was part of my research in preperation for A+ certification, I am only familiarizeing myself with Sockets and Processors. I am actualy gathering pictures of such sockets and processors. I have on the other hand discovered this site:

www.cpu-collection.de

As well as www.old-computers.com which may be of interest to you.

[nihil]

Hi mirado~ , foxy~ is joking. I have a physical collection of old equipment, operating systems and applications, as I am interested in the historical side of computing as well

I would say that there isn't a precise mapping of AMD to Intel products, other than that they both had "dual ranges" for a while. The "Duron" compares to the "Celeron" and the "Athlon" to the "Pentium"

Also beware of the notation. A Duron is rated at its chip speed whereas an Athlon is rated at its "performance value" or "equivalent to a Pentium" This method was also used by Cyrix for it's processors, so my Cyrix 233 actually works at 187MHz but performs like a PII/233.

The problem is that the AMD/Intel product lines overlap over time. My personal (and very crude) comparison is that K-6 is about a PII and that K-7 is late PII (my best PII is a 450MHz with PC100 SDRAM). K-7 also compares and competed with early PIIIs. Athlons are PIII competitors (I believe that these were also known as K-7s?), and the Athlon XP****+ is a P4 competitor (Microsoft don't know Latin numbers above "3"......... I guess Bill Gates is a fan of Watership Down? ............remember? the rabbits couldn't count beyond 3, after that it was "a large number" )

Please don't forget to look at "MMX support" as this was a bit of a breakthrough, and does provide another angle by which to compare processors.

[hexadecimal]

i do believe socket 7 and socket A are the same socket... i have an older mobo from when DDR was first becomming popular.. the best processor it can run is an xp2000 athlon... but can also run K-7's

i JUST reccently moved from socket A to socket AM2... i had an xp3000 that did everything i needed it to do without fail. Socket A in my book has proved to be one of the best processor forms in my eyes. every intel ive had socket 478 has just been a hassel

[nihil]

mirado~

I have just found the link to Eric's site:

http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/Sockets.htm

You should find pretty much everything you need to know here. Just remember to follow the links for more details. The site acts like a sort of index

This site is also useful. Here is an 86 page comparison of Intel and AMD:

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/11/21...charts_2005uk/

[mirado.kelly]

Thanks Nihil ... Its funny I started thinking it might have been a joke. Thanks, especialy for the links, I found them very usefull and am still going through them. They are valueble resurces.

A Duron is rated at its chip speed whereas an Athlon is rated at its "performance value" or "equivalent to a Pentium"

Thanks for this important peice of information, Ill have to check into that.

It does apear that Cyrix is now owned by Via? I think that some of those mini ITX Mainboards and CPUs from Via are sleek, some very nice progrcts using them at http://www.mini-itx.com/

[nihil]

Hi mirado~ ,

I thought you might not know about those two UK sites

Cyrix merged with National Semiconductor, who eventually sold them to Via.

I actually have a Gateway 2000 with a Cyrix 386 processor and the old 30-pin RAM strips

It runs Windozzzzzzzzzze 95.................. but very slowly, as I am sure you can imagine.

I guess it must be quite rare as I don't think Cyrix made very many 386 class CPUs. Actually they didn't make them, they just designed them and had them fabricated.

Yes the Athlon XP+ range doesn't use the true clockspeed. This has an "Athlon XP 1900" which actually runs at about 1.6GHz.

It marginally loses to a 1.7GHz P4 of the same era on overall benchmark............... that is because it only has PC2100 memory and onboard video. The P4 has an AGP video card and RAMBUS PC800 memory.

Back then, the Athlon XP+ would beat the equivalent P4 and the Duron would slaughter a Celeron. I guess Intel momentarily lost the plot, particularly with their cache size/configuration?

I had a bit of fun one day because I had managed to "win" a machine with twin PIIIs in it ......... my colleagues were slightly amused that I had "a PIII box", when they were all getting P4s..............until I told them that there were two PIIIs................. and they were Xeons

The RAID1 SCSI array, $1500 video card, and 21" monitor also p1$$ed them off............ well if you look after the lads designing weapons of mass destruction, you expect them to look after you? and their cast-offs were better than anyone in IT dare hope for...........Actually, it did make a lot of sense as I needed a "reference machine" to test their upgrades, and there would be little point trying that on a standard IT issue box?

[Und3ertak3r]

The Socket A was used by the Athlons.. Socket 7 was used by the Pentium 1's and AMD K6 chips
Pentium II used (predominently) Slot 1
There was a Slot A standard for a version of the Athlon/K7 never seen one so cant confirm.
the Athlons used true clock speed upto the 1GHz chips.. these are the pre Athlon XP chips.. Post XP (I cant remember the core names..but Palamino rings a bell) were benchmarked speeds.. the reference was the 1Ghz Athlon CPU..
The Duron and Athlon, the Duron was the Budget version of the Athlon, when these were released they were marketed against the Intel PIII, and the XP+'s were P4 killers
I do not recall the Durons being marketed with a different speed rating scheme to the Athlon.. the Duron dissappeared from the market not long after the XP+'s hit the shelves..
the Sempron eventually took the Durons place as the AMD - Celeron (or Budget CPU)

[hexadecimal]

thourobread (mind the spelling) was the core name for my xp2000 and i knew someone that had a thunderbird(?)... it was a 1ghz athlon... wouldnt www.amd.com have a nice list of there cpu history?