The little Duron that could

[Gamer1]

A 1.8 duron (muxhb) sure has a lot of horsepower under that little hood. I got my sister a 1.8 duron and mobo (k7vta3 rev8) for xmas, she wanted a cheap computer in which my nephews could play with. For $50 at fry's i got her my present. and with some extra parts that i have like the radeon 7200 ve, 256 Mb of ddr, and a 13GB hard drive (crap maxtor 5400rpm one). it's one pretty fast computer.

i wanted to test the duron's processing power. gaming was about out of the question, as the video card suck, although battlefeild played pretty nice on it. I fired up Gordian Knot, got my lord of the rings extended version vobs and used divx 5.1.1 (standard, psychovisual effects off, bilinear). I just couldn't believe my eyes. i was encoding at 40-45 fps!!! I was pretty sure it was a mistake or something. I got more vobs, my back to the future 1, 2, and 3. sure enough it was going at 40-45fps rates. final rate averaging the 2 passes was 43.826fps for lord of the rings disk 1.

Now i was astounded with the duron's power, I wanted to test it even further, i put my 512 Kingston ram in it, now it has 768MB of memory, and i also put in my ti4200 just for kicks and tested ut2k3, i got 52.483fps on botmatch (1024x768)!!! very very very close to my 2000+ 56.748fps. I also fired up my sister's husband's 2.0Ghz P4, got my (40GB hard drive Western Digital 8MB of cache 7200 rpm, did a fresh install of windows and so i don't mess with my brother in law's files), put 768MB of ddr ram and i used his ti4200 and i got 45.371fps, i tested it twice to see if there was any fluke and i got around the same number the second time around with .329 fps difference.

i might go get another one myself, or opt for the 1.6 duron w/ mobo instead for $40 at fry's. for people looking for a cheap pc: buy a duron!!! for people looking for a htpc: buy a duron!!! for people looking for a gaming pc: buy a duron!!! If you think about it, if you go get youself a p4, or celeron around 2-2.5Ghz speed; and you are only gonna use the comp for gaming, opt for a duron and with the money you saved, go buy a better vid card, or ram, and get better results than having an expensive cpu with a crappy video card. :guitar:

[aolforbroadband]

Can I order off this Fry's place online? I want a Duron!

Dude seriously I'm totally blown away by this, I've got $40 cash right in my hot little hand!!! BTW, how big is the mobo? Got any pics of it? Wow, what a deal!!!!!!!!!! :guitar:

[Gamer1]

fry's technically has a website it's outpost.com but outpost.com does not reflect fry's actual pricing of components in their stores.

there are fry's stores in oregon (where i live), washington, california there is about 14 fry's stores in california, arizona, texas, and nevada

it's this big ol' huge place built like a warehouse like costco. i've only been to 2 fry's store, the one here in oregon and the one in san jose california.

the way i got the duron was a weekly special. last 2 weeks, the 1.8 duron was on sale, this week is 1.6 duron for $40. but the weekly special stays for 2 months even more they have been having a 2000+ with mobo in sale for $65 for about 8 months now, you just have to wait for the right week... lol

the motherboard is the standard atx

the only picture that i have is the add for it, i have a scanner but not a camera

[aolforbroadband]

Crap, I REALLY want that duron 1.6ghz! What kind of memory is supported? BTW, does it have USB 2.0 ports?

If you would be so kind, I could send you my $40 cash through the mail, I live on the eastcoast, Washington D.C, and there are no Fry's around here. The closest is MicroCenter and theyre a rip off. The lowest I've seen this Duron bundle at in mother places is $80 at Tigerdirect.com, pfft, F-That! Anyway, I could send you the money along with some spare money for shipping charges Please . I'm assuming this comes in a sturdy mobo box, If you could hook me up I'd really appreciate it. We can work something out if you want, im on AIM, my Screen names X1870.

[Gamer1]

no, that' s okay... i don't want to ship anything through mail... and right now i really don't want to drive through snow either...

[Guruma]

This new durons are just "closed" old Athlons!!! They have only blocked casche, ect.

- DURON 1,4 GHz + modyfication = ATHLON XP 1,6GHz (Overclocked up to 2600MHz)

- DURON 1,6 GHz + modyfication = ATHLON XP 2,0GHz

- DURON 1,8 GHz + modyfication = ATHLON XP 2,2GHz

Here some polish guy is selling tips how to make that for 1$ (but i bet you could find it on the net for free!)
http://allegro.pl/show_item.php?item=19743545

[bahamut_2006]

Even the old Durons have a good bit of power. My bro's 1.3 Duron (an older one with the Morgan core) can almost play any game I have as good as my current rig. What holds it back is its Geforce 4 MX 420 AGP and the fact it only has 256 MB of ram. I built my rig back in March along with his, and his was considerably cheaper and performs almost as well (the difference is usually negligible) And now you can find those Duron 1.3's around $30. But I have yet to hear about these new Durons. I figured AMD had simply discontinued them, but they come back as a slightly weaker Athlon to rival with Intel's Celerons which I personally wouldnt touch with a 10 foot pole. Long live AMD!

[hushypushy]

ah yes gamer1 i see that Fry's ad every single day, fry's rules you can built a hella great PC there for extra cheap. i wonder why outpost has the same stuff....but about 10-40% more expensive?

[RF]

Awesome

[Gamer1]

outpost used to be it's own separate comapany, until fry's took it over. reminds me of the hp/compaq thing, even though hp owns compaq, compaq is a separate brand that competes with hp with also different prices on about the same computers.

[Prafull]

Will these be compatible with kt133 motherboards or new mobos needed ?

[op3n_skill]

>>- DURON 1,6 GHz + modyfication = ATHLON XP 2,0GHz

IIRC, its AXP 1900+, the 2000+ is 1.667 ghz while the 1900+ is 1.6 ghz

The newer durons are castrated Tbred-As with lowered L2 Cache size. They wont work on KT133s..

Me gave my "Spitfire" Duron 700 Machine to my sister...

[Gamer1]

Originally Posted by Prafull

Will these be compatible with kt133 motherboards or new mobos needed ?

they should theoretically work for the kt133 chipset, since the new duron have a 133Mhz bus speed (2x133 = 266). They "should" work with them, but then again it's via we are talking about... their kt333 chipset were incompatible with processors with that bus speed, they needed a new revision the kt333cf, in order to support it, same with the kt400 for the 400fsb processors (2x200). via started to go downhill after the kt266.

my ecs k7s5a pro, has the ability to support them, with just a bios update.

prafull, who's your motherboard manufacturer

UPDATE: i've been poking around motherboard websites so far, the only manufacturer that officially supports the new durons is asus. MSI stated that on all their kt133 boards (even kt133a) that they do not support the new durons

MSI kt133a product list http://www.msi.com.tw/program/search...p?pro=1&chp=24
MSI kt133 product list http://www.msi.com.tw/program/search...p?pro=1&chp=25

Asus cpu support page: http://www.asus.com/support/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx

Abit, they just seemed to have dropped all support for their old kt133 boards, i can't find anything on them, i could find the board, but i can't get a list on what cpu they support, only stating "AMD Socket A Duron (100MHz FSB) up to 950MHz, AMD Socket A Athlon (100/133MHz FSB) up to 1.4GHz "

Soyo cpu support page http://soyousa.com/kb/kbdesc.php?id=16

[didamangi]

A little off topic but wow, I just tried encoding my dvd's and i get this:

Divx 5.11 = 5-7 fps
Xvid = 25-30 fps

All configs are exactly the same as the guide from doom9 site since I'm a newbie at ripping dvds, any suggestions what might go wrong?

[INCA]

i dont like fry electronic after the crappy Amd 1800 with msi motherboard i got couple years ago. i have so many problems with it. luckly im upgrading. Fry Electronics have good prices but alot there hardware have problems.

[Gamer1]

Originally Posted by didamangi

A little off topic but wow, I just tried encoding my dvd's and i get this:

Divx 5.11 = 5-7 fps
Xvid = 25-30 fps

All configs are exactly the same as the guide from doom9 site since I'm a newbie at ripping dvds, any suggestions what might go wrong?

i think you are in slow mode in divx, and you may have psycovisual effects on. I encode at 51.647 fps with gordian knot w/ my 2000+ (and that makes me encode above realtime, lol, i love divx 5.1.1).

Originally Posted by INCA

i dont like fry electronic after the crappy Amd 1800 with msi motherboard i got couple years ago. i have so many problems with it. luckly im upgrading. Fry Electronics have good prices but alot there hardware have problems.

its not a fry's problem, it's an msi problem, that's for sure. fry's only sells stuff, not make them. I had problems with msi kt266, traded it in for a soyo kt333 dragon ultra. (may it rest in piece)

[INCA]

your lucky that you traded yours in. I guess its not their fault. but after 4 times you kinda wonder. but it was my fault for buying the cpu and motherboard combo.

[hushypushy]

i will have you know that Fry's doesnt actually manufacture anything, they just make stuff. so if you bought a crapass MSI mobo, well then it's your fault for buying crap.

by the way, only ONE thing that i or my friends has ever bought from Fry's has had problems. one of my WD hard drives died in a month which was quite obviously a WD problem. it's like saying Target sucks because you bought a videogame there that came messed up

[op3n_skill]

Umm.. Any motherboard that supports Athlon XPs (KT266 and up) will accept the Appalbred Durons.
Spitfire, Morgan (Duron) and Thunderbird (Athlon) Cores are the only procs that will work on KT133s...

[Gamer1]

Originally Posted by op3n_skill

Umm.. Any motherboard that supports Athlon XPs (KT266 and up) will accept the Appalbred Durons.
Spitfire, Morgan (Duron) and Thunderbird (Athlon) Cores are the only procs that will work on KT133s...

no, there are some kt133 boards that will support the athlon xps and the new durons. like asus motherboards.