Athlon reliability in discussion?

[danielshoes]

Folks, I STILL have a K6-2-450 machine and plan upgrade it to an Athlon. I am having discussions with some ressellers, because they are telling me that if I choose an Athlon I will be a dumb, once a computer with an Athlon is "disposable" (according to their opinion), because most of such systems have short life and a high level return. They claim that it is the same situation that happened with some IBM hds (75GXP series), very fast, but most of all with short life.

AMD users, please tell me: Are they correct or it is some "small talk" in order to sell me their P4 box (3 times more expensive)?

 

[Priit]

Since you still have K6-2 running, you shoud know that exactly the same stupid crap was told about K6-x'es (not compatible, dying soon etc.) while back..

 

[Egrimm]

Yeah, they just want to make you pay much more for their P4 systems.
Priits example is good, the K6x'es were said to be bad and not that lasting, and yet they still work today...

I had an Atlhon classic (Slot A) and it's been working fine for more than 1½ year now (a friend has it now). My old 1.2 T-Bird work fine, but it's only 6 year old (another friend has it now). My 1.4 T-Bird died, but that's beacuse my DragonOrb3 crushed the core. My XP1600+ works fine, but it's only 1½ month old, so you really can't say something about it's lifesan yet, but it'll be long I'm sure.
The comparison to the 75Gxp isn't that good, since IBM admitted that there were a design flaw in the drives (I think), there has newer been such flaws in the Athlons.

 

[PUNKtotalled]

Don't be dumb and buy an AMD.

 

[KaRRiLLioN]

Ever since the Athlons came out here's what I've owned, and they're all still running like champs. In fact I use a couple of them for servers at work.

Athlon 600 with Biostar mobo ( I don't remember the model # for some of the mobos) -Now running Win98 (my wife's computer)
Athlon 700 with Asus mobo - Now running Win2K Server with MS Proxy 2.0
Athlon T-Bird with Asus K7V (I think) -now running WinXP Pro (I gave it to my best friend for his new gaming rig)
Athlon 1800+ (Epox 8KHA+) -my home machine running WinXP Pro
Athlon 1900+ (Epox 8KHA+) -my workstation at work runnin Win2k Server

I would NEVER have bought an AMD before the Athlons came out simply because the Pentiums ran better for me at the time, but every Athlon I've bought has been awesome and stable. The only problems I've had have been with mobos being bad. Asus is a safe bet for stability, but I've had no problems with my Epox boards that I have right now. I just bought another XP1900+ with a Dragon PLus mobo. I haven't put the box together yet but I'm expecting more great things from it.

During this time I have also bought and built several P3 systems with the RDRAM mobos and I've had 2 of them give me constant probs which turned out to be mobo problems.

Anyway, I hope this helps you. If I were you I wouldn't have any qualms about buying and building an Athlon system. Don't let the marketers turn you onto a P4. They are expensive and not worth the money when compared to the Athlons. Save your money instead for a better video card.

 

[Swanny]

Well, of all the AMD CPUs I've owned or worked on none of them have ever died. None of the Intel CPUs have either. I too still have a K6-2 450 that's not being used right now, but was for 2 years straight until about 2 months ago and will be put into another machine soon. I chose to replace it with a 1Ghz AMD Athlon and have not had any problems. I think that CPU reliability is not much of a problem unless you run your computer in an oven, in which case you might want something really cool running like the Via C3.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

I'd trust more of what you hear from consumers and reviews than what a retailer's gonna tell you. They either wanna sell you a product or they don't know what they're talking about. The reason Athlons probably have a high return rate is from people rushing, not paying attention, and cracking their cores..

Price/performance can't be beat, and the chips are reliable as heck.

 

[Jeff7]

The only reason my T-bird processors have died was because of my own inexperience or just plain stupidity. Otherwise, they are stable, fast, and cheap.

 

[osage]

B S pure and simple......

 

[sandorski]

They are speaking utter crap. Find someone else.

 

[AGodspeed]

AMD users, please tell me: Are they correct or it is some "small talk" in order to sell me their P4 box (3 times more expensive)?

Many people seem to confuse the saying "Athlon processors are unstable" with "Athlon systems are unstable." It's a pretty accepted fact that instability associated with Athlon processor based setups lie in the motherboard, specifically the chipset. Early on in the Athlon's life, VIA was basically the only chipset company making Athlon chipsets. These chipsets weren't of the highest quality, and hence people have claimed ever since then that "Athlons are unstable", despite the huge advances in performance and stability of Athlon motherboards since the Athlon debuted.

Don't let some know nothing salesman tell you otherwise. In fact, you don't have to take my word for it, just look at the examples I give below. They illustrate a motherboard (in this case, the Athlon motherboard called the "Tyan Tiger MP") of great price, performance, and stability.

So, let two of the most respected computer hardware sites on the Internet (Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech.com and Johan De Gelas of Aceshardware.com) sum it all up for you:

Johan De Gelas of Aceshardware.com on the Athlon Tyan MP motherboard:

As we have been able to test both boards for months now, we can safely say that Tyan's dual Athlon boards are the most stable Athlon platforms on the earth. We have tested the samples that both AMD and Tyan have sent us, and several retail boards (Tyan Tiger MP) for more than three months now, and we have never seen one workstation benchmark fail or crash. That is remarkable, because we have not only benchmarked a wide variety of high-end software, but each test has also been repeated tens of times by now as we have been testing with 6 different OpenGL cards (more about OpenGL cards in the next article).

Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech.com on the Athlon Tyan MP motherboard:

During our weeks of testing we never encountered a single problem with the Tiger MP, even after testing it outside of AMD's and Tyan's specifications by using Dual Athlon (Thunderbird) CPUs and Dual Duron (Morgan) CPUs. The board works fine with all Socket-A CPUs both in single and in 2P mode.

There are many other motherboards to choose from, from chipset makers such as SiS, VIA, Nvidia, ALi and AMD. There's an Athlon motherboard for all types of computer users now, so enjoy.

 

[danielshoes]

Thanks to everyone! Your words were exactly what I ever thought, during all these years reading reviews dially, but, you know... just in case...

Here in Brazil, most of the ressellers are not able to distinguish a processor form a hamburger. That's what happens. So sorry for the uninformed users...

Good bye!!! Happy new 2002!!!

 

[Egrimm]

Glad that I could help you, why do computer-sellers always have to be dumb and not know anything about what they sell? Trust me, I know 'em, I worked for one a couple of years ago and he nearly fried a processor by applying nearly one 1v too much to it!
Happy new year! (even though the first day of the new year soon end here in Denmark).

 

[ortie]

I think that all the retail shops are pulling the same BS...I went to one of the computer shows that comes here in Jacksonville,FL recently. I happened to hear a retailer and a guy(his customer) talkin about building a new box for the dude. He was going on and on about how the P4 totally out performs the XP(the customer wanted an XP box), and how the AMD's as a whole have short life spans. I interjected that the retailer was full of sh*t and that if the customer bought from this guy, he was stupid. I told the retailer that I had proof that a slower XP could almost outperform a faster P4. He said I had propaganda from the AMD web site. When I told him that it was testing I did myself with two identical systems(except for the procs of course and showed him the bench marks I printed), he still claimed that the chips had short lives. I then told him about the K6 550 that I gave to my mother that I've had since 95-96, he laughed. I walked away from the retailer(with his prospective customer) and laughed! By the way, I ended up building the guy an XP 1900+ machine, and made 80 bucks out of the deal!

I also have an old T-Bird 850(100 mhz FSB I believe) that has been up since 98 or 99! You tell me, do they have short life spans or are retailers tryin to make a quick buck. Never trust a retailer, they just want money! Computer eqip. retailer=used car sales person

Trust the review sites, they usually have no alliance to any company...have a nice day

 

[microAmp]

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