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The AMD Duron Gets A Home - Sort Of
Techman writes "AnandTech has put together an in-depth analysis of the SiS 730S chipset for AMD's Socket-A platform. What's so special about this 730S? Well, it turns out that one of the reasons that AMD's Duron hasn't been selling well in retail markets is that it doesn't have a cheap platform to run on. The 730S from SiS is an attempt to solve that problem. Unfortunately as it is SiS' first attempt at an Athlon chipset, the 730S does not perform as well as you would hope it would. And in many cases, the Duron loses its luster when combined with the 730S."
Well, if that's the problem, customers should order Duron Ultra Deluxe High Gloss rather than the flat eggshell variety!
sulli
RTFJ.
The componentization of the PC industry and the economies of scale means that nobody makes cases anymore, nobody makes chassis anymore, nobody makes PC boards anymore and nobody makes anything distinguishable from the other guy anymore. Seems all you can do is buy cheap and assemble cheaper to sell on price alone.
:-)
That leads to an industry that's got zero interest in innovation and zero responsiveness to change.
If you can't convince a chassis maker, who's got a thousand mom-and-pop sweat-shop box builders besides you (so he couldn't care less about you or your idea,) that you need something different and it would behove him to make it, you're going to buy off the rack the same as everybody else and slit your own throat on price alone since you can't come up with anything different, never mind better.
The same goes for the PC board makers, the case makers, the component makers.
You don't stand a chance if your pin-outs aren't 100% compatible.
You don't stand a chance if your instruction set isn't 100% compatible.
You don't stand a chance of you cabling isn't 100% compatible (What the [expletive deleted] is the deal with these parallel/serial port "USB cable" kludges. Apple had the balls to make a port for it on their iMacs.)
This industry has [expletive deleted] itself to death. You the consumer have squat-all input in the process or the product because, even if you were willing to pay more, the people who want you to by only to sell you the same boxes as everybody else.
Face it. The reason Apple's designs look different is that the Mac buyers are paying what good design costs. I don't see a cool looking ultra quiet Cube on my office desktop anytime soon because my boss cares more about bucks than about me. But my den would make you drool.
Apart from Apple, computers have become so boring, you want them to be invisible, except that they aren't and you rip your knuckles open installing anything. Used to be the desktop was where you worked, now its the space occupied by the monitor and the beige box. There's no room left to work.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
...a full Athlon does not cost that much more. I think one problem of competing for low end business is that AMDs lowest end processor is being priced out of the market.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
(first, pardon the typos in my eariler post..)
I was playing a little bit of Devil's advocate there... I haven't ever used a board with integrated sound/video that's been better than a temporary solution until one can put the new hardware in...
>The problem is that there are no low cost Socket A motherboards
Yes, that's my point - the people trying to hit the $300-500 price point don't care nearly as much about anything else. Of course, the people that buy end up getting them at BestBuy or Radio Smack, and hope it comes with that Microsoft Netscape thing, that lets you download the Internet (fits conveniently on a Zip disk!)... An extra few bucks is usually worth the money, especially on motherboards...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
In French, "dur" means hard.
Is Duron supposed to give someone a hardon? It's not workin' for me.
-Nev
Well the 730S is supposed to be a low cost low end solution. Their target market will mostly be pc manufactures instead of more advanced pc users who can build their own system. You'll find this chipset in almost all of the sub $1000 premade pc's (ie. compaq, hp, e-machines etc.)I think it's funny how this chipset is dogged because it doesn't meet hardcore geeks expectations, but i have to ask how many of you would buy a 60 dollar motherboard? not many of you.
:)
Basically the chipset meets it purpose, it's an inexpensive chipset for an inexpensive processor to make inexpensive, entry-level, low-end pc's. I guess it would be the equivalant of the 440zx chipset. Grandma only checks her email, types letters, and researches our family tree. She doesn't need 23500000000000000 fps in quake 3
Now don't flame me because I put the duron in the lowend group, remember that's what it was designed for. I realize you hardware buffs will want to buy them because they perform well and are very overclockable like the celeron, but would you really buy a cheap motherboard to overclock on? I didn't think so, but then this chipset wasn't made for you.
Duron lost it's luster? A little Turtle Wax and a buffer will fix that right up.
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AMD chips are
This is bad engineering? Our Durons are running smooth as silk, thanks.
On par, a Duron is probably 90% of the speed of it's equal speed Athlon brother, on the same mobo. But it's a great bargain to pick up a 600mhz Duron for $50 and easily overclock it to 900+Mhz with another $50 of cooling supplies. That's what makes you a geek, taking slow equipment and kicking faster machine's asses in frame rates.
750 Mhz Duron: $63.
733 Celeron: $114
750 MHz Tbird: $98
Thunderbird costs less than Celeron at the same clock. When building a low-end system, the real choice is between Tbird and Duron; Celeron isn't even a factor. Maroberts' point was: with the Tbird's extra cache only costing $35, it is hard to justify the purchase of Duron.
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