[NTLUG:Discuss] Athlon incompatibilities?

[Jonathan Brugge]

>I'm thinking of building a system with the AMD Athlon
>Thunderbird 1GHz CPU. This will be the first time I'll
>move out of Intel Inside land.
>
>My main concern is software compatibility: Apparently,
>most software should work fine but there are stories of
>incompatibilities, e.g. StarOffice 5.2 was available only
>for x86 machines, some PC games are limited to Intel
>architecture, etc.
>
>Any real life encounters with Athlon incompatible software
>(Windows and Linux) that people have run into? Also, tips
>from anyone who has recently built a similar system will
>also be appreciated.
>Sameer

To point out a few things:
-The Athlon is x86 too, so there're no problems with that.
-they call it "Intel architecture", but in fact they mean x86-architecture. 
There's really no difference between the Athlon and the Pentium, except 
support for SSE and 3D-Now. The Pentiums use SSE, Atlons use 3D-Now. All 
software will work on both processors.
-I've had no problems with my Athlon, except with my mem (it detected only 
64 MB), but that can be motherboard-related too. Just specifying how much 
mem I had when booting or in a file solved it.

I would definately go with the Athlon, as it's faster in most cases and 
cheaper too...what else could you wish?

Jonathan Brugge
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