ATHLON 1.3GHz Question

[UfthakK]

Just curious as to what ram an ATHLON 1.3GHz supports - SD, DDR, or both.

Ta.

[Darthtanion]

It is not the processor that supports RAM, but the motherboard. It will depend on the chipset as to which type of memory that the board will accept.

[UfthakK]

Ok heres my situation.

I want to upgrade my socket A CPU on my asus a7v mobo (which only supports sd 133mhz ram). I am under the assumption that I can put in any duron or regular athlon processor in it as long as I have the latest bios version installed.

The highest of these are duron 1.3ghz and athlon 1.3-1.4 athlon (correct me if I am wrong)

I am under the impression that Athlon MP/XP CPU's whilst still being socket A require ddr ram. As my mobo only supports sd, I cannot go that high.

If I do purhcase a newer motherboard down the track I want to know if the processor I buy now will run on a socket A ddr ram mobo.

Feel free to shoot my assumed facts full of holes, and offer any assistance you can.

Thanks.

[Darthtanion]

OK... now that we have the goals, we can look at what we have.

First off, as long as your motherboard will handle the FSB and multiplier of the Duron/T-Bird line of processors, then it is likely that the board will run it just fine. Even if it doesn't have the official manufacturer's support for that processor.

As to the Athlon MP/XP processors requiring DDR, the answer is no, they do not. The problem comes with some of the older chipsets (like yours) that just can't support the advanced instructions used with these newer processors. From what I've heard, the MINIMUM chipset that can be used with the Athlon XP processor is the KT133A, but even then only the later revisions of this chipset will work. Since the Asus A7V motherboard uses the older KT133 chipset, you'll be out of luck using an XP processor on your current board.

Finally, if you get a newer motherboard down the line that does use DDR memory, you should have no problems using your current processor until you can upgrade. I use the EPoX 8KHA+ board in my system (KT266A & DDR) and used my old T-Bird 1000 for a while until I could get an Athlon XP processor.

Hopefully this answers your questions. If not, then let me know what else you have in mind and I'll help where I'm able. :)