Before proceeding I'd just like to remind you that an editorial is not a 'General' article, it's the views of a specific individual and does not always reflect a grouped opinion. Please try to avoid flame mailing me if for some reason this item doesn't meet your own experiences, everybody has a different computer and so no two peoples experiences can ever be the same.

It's been a year since my last AMD related ramble fest and as usual technology has moved along faster than a TVR (Sports Car). Where a K7-650 was all the rage early last year, now AMD have brought us the lovely K7 variant - Thunderbird model 'B' and soon to be released 'C' (133Mhz FSB Support/266Mhz DDR).

However it's never been the CPUs that caused any grief, instead the motherboard aspect has caused most niggles. This problem is taken and then times by a factor of 100 when you consider that there isn't as much variety in AMD supporting products as you have with Intel.

The AGP Stability Issues

When the first batch of K7 supporting boards ventured onto the market some issues, often serious, with AGP timing, interference and voltage caused many graphics cards (not just Nvidia) to be unstable. You had to click down into AGPx1 or turn it off altogether if you wanted games to be 100% stable, thrusting forward into x2 mode brought system hangs and general 3D instability.

Next >>