We have a warning for AMD purchasers. The socketed Athlon and Duron CPUs have turned out to be rather fragile and some heat sinks can damage the CPU. AMD informed us that the mounting position of the AMD CPUs is slightly different and higher than that of the Intel socketed CPUs. When a heat sink designed for a Pentium III is used, it can cause overheating or cracking.

Also, even with a properly designed heat sink, repeated mounting and removal can also damage the CPU. In fact, after much testing and swapping of CPUs, we ended up with both a dead Duron 700MHz and a dead Athlon Thunderbird 1GHz. We recommend that all owners of socketed CPUs, AMD, Intel and otherwise, be very gentle with heat sink installation and make sure you have a heat sink designed for your specific type of CPU. Also, don't fool around too much with installing and removing the CPU as you might damage it.

Of all the Athlon-approved heat sinks, we specifically recommend Cooler Master's DP5-6H51. It installs and removes with little effort, and since our switchover to using this heat sink, we have had no heat sink related CPU deaths.

Power has always been one of the Athlon's sticky points. Our 1.2GHz Athlon Thunderbird used 1.75V for a input voltage, the same at the 1.1GHz model and .05 volts higher than the Pentium III 1GHz. The overall power draw is usually considered to be much higher, but we do not know what that power draw is. AMD had no word on what the max draw would be.

AMD is dropping their CPU prices drastically. The Thunderbird 1.2GHz was available for as low as $490 when we last checked. Their 1GHz price was all the way down to $270! The Pentium III 1GHz currently goes for $670. Intel should drop their prices soon, but AMD is going to sell plenty of processors in the mean time. 1.2GHz for less than $500 is a heck of a value.