Difference between Barton and Thoroughbred?

Hello!

I have a couple of questions regarding Athlon CPU's.

(1) What is the difference between the Barton and the Thouroughbred CPU's? Which one is newer and which one is faster?

(2) What CPU can you recommend (should be powerful enough for 3D gaming but not too expensive)?

(3) Which RAM's do I need (PC-333 or PC-400)? Do I have to buy CL2 RAM's?

(4) Does anybody know RAM's from Apacer? Any exerience with these?

Thank's in advance,
--Alex

Alex,

I have the Barton 2500 Athlon XP ($80). It's supposed to run at 166 mhz (333) but I have it O/C'd to run at 200 mhz (400). It runs real nice. I have one stick of 512 Apacer RAM PC2700 (333). Since I'm running at PC3200 speeds (400) I guess I could use 400 speed memory. Now, I don't know if my memory is overclocked at 400 or it's running at 333 and I'm losing some performance. I like the CPU and I like the Apacer RAM. By CL-2 you mean the CAS latency? I read someplace that the performance boost associated with CAS latency was minimal. My CAS latency is 2.5. Newegg sells both Barton and Thouroughbred CPU's and there isn't much price differential. It appears the Barton has 512 cache and the Thouroubred has 256. Since the Thouroughbred price is close the Barton and you'll have to read through the Newegg feedback to choose the best one for you.

1) The Barton is newer, has a larger cache (512 vs 256k), and supports a faster fsb. The Barton also has the highest available clock speeds. Look here for specs on both processors.

2) Depends what you think is too expensive. AMD's are generally cheaper than Intel, but not quite as fast (2400+ not quite as fast as 2.4c P4 overall). The P4c is probably more overclockable. 3d gaming depends just as much or more on the video card overall, so if you're over 2Ghz or so (2000 or 2200+) you're probably better off spending more on video if you're on a limited budget.

3) You want to match your memory speed with your fsb speed. However, if you have faster RAM, it will downclock to whatever the fsb speed is, and if you plan to overclock, you do probably want faster ram, so you have more bandwidth available when up the fsb. Lower latency will give you slightly better performance, but not a lot compared to higher speeds overall.

4) Don't know/use apacer. Have used kingston and mushkin, both good. Have also heard good things about ocz, crucial, and corsair.

HTH

Hello!

Thank you for yours answers. I guess I go for the Barton then.

Greetings,
--Alex