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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (151976)	12/10/2001 9:34:09 PM
From: Dave	Respond to of 186894

wanna, People that bought Athlon chips needed to upgrade their motherboard at least as many times as people upgrading their Intel CPUs IMO, and I really can't show anything to back this up, most computer users do not upgrade their PCs. Instead, every so often, they purchase new computers. On the other hand, I have "heard" that most corporations upgrade 1/3 of their computers every three years. However, when I was working for a defense contractor (back in 1997), I was using an 80286 for basic functions, however I did have a separate computer and access to a SPARC for "other" functions... regards, dave

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (151976)	12/11/2001 1:12:24 AM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

wbmw, The original subject was upgrading CPU. This means you buy a computer, and at some time in the future, you upgrade the CPU. In order to do this, the motherboard you have needs to be "forward" compatible, meaning a future processor can be used in the present motherboard. (You see the obvious difference between "forward" compatible and backward compatible. Paul Engel and Winsock obviously can't, since they beat their chest about the fact that they can buy today the latest Tualatin motherboard with Tualatin processor. Their motherboard is so advanced, that at any time, they can take out their latest Tualatin processor, and downgrade it to a microprocessor made 1, 2 or even 3 years ago.) This is my rating of platform regarding upgradability, as they were introduced: Intel Slot 1: Excellent RIP Intel Socket 370, 1st: Bad RIP AMD Slot A: Bad RIP Intel Socket 370, 2nd: Bad RIP AMD Socket A: Very Good Current (may turn out excellent) Intel Socket 423: Horrible Current (shortest lived platform, instant obsolescence) Intel Socket 370, 3rd: Bad Current (dead end platform) Intel Socket 478: ??? Current (Too new to judge, may turn out good to excellent) You can see that Intel went from Excellent to Horrible, but has a potential for improvement with the Socket 478 based platform. AMD went from Bad to Very Good, and given the fact that there will be another 1 to 1.5 generations of the chips based on the current platform (Toroughbred, Barton), the potential for upgradability is Excellent. Joe PS: I am not sure why you seem so confused about the basic fact of upgradability. It is something completely different about replacing the system to have the highest performing system all the time, for which you have to constantly replace many components, but it is completely different subject. With upgrade, you start with some $100, and you throw it at the performance bottleneck. It is most likely the CPU, or not enough memory, so you buy that, open the case, and in about 5 minutes, you have the same system performing faster.

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (151976)	12/11/2001 11:13:57 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: The slot A Athlon only had the KX133 and AMD750 platforms available to it - thus the 500MHz Athlon classic would have required one of these options. The Thunderbird was socket A The AMD750 chipset supported thunderbird in all boards, while most (not all) Slot A boards with VIA's chipset did not. (from pricewatch - notice there are now very few non-Thunderbird offerings for Slot A. Leads one to suspect Slot A supported Thunderbird, eh? Similarly, most Socket A boards support Palomino, even ones introduced long before Palomino. And information on which would and which wouldn't was available prior to Palomino's release - I bought 2 SiS based boards, instead of VIA, for 2 home machines a year ago, partly because they were expected to, and did, support the next generation Palomino) $69 - Athlon 900 tbird Slot A $54 - Athlon 850 tbird Slot A $56 - Athlon 800 tbird Slot A $47 - Athlon 750 tbird Slot A $34 - Athlon 700 tbird Slot A Intel changes Slots/Sockets a lot more often than AMD does, but it doesn't really matter much. Intel can't make up its mind, and AMD can't afford to redesign its socket every 4 months, whether it would like to or not - so what? It just doesn't really matter much, but does help explain PC expert's (defined as those who build and therefore may upgrade their own machines) fondness for AMD. But in terms of total sales, those are very small numbers. I wouldn't bother to post this, except you are so clearly wrong, and it seemed reasonable to correct your error.