The Athlons are just a family of processors that range from the $100
Athon XPs to the $1000 Athlon 64 FX60.

Since you've been an Intel user, the best place to start would be
knowing that the Athlon XPs were meant to compete with the Pentiums,
and their name would indicate their Intel counterpart. For example,
the Athlon XP 1700 is comparable to a Pentium 1.7 Ghz chip.

The Duron family, on the other hand, was meant to go head to head with
Intel's Celerons. They've since been replaced by the Semprons as their
entry level CPUs. With this in mind, you would want an Athlon XP over
a Duron, for the same reason that you would want a Pentium over a
Celeron.

The ASUS A7V333 is a Socket A motherboard, and as such can only go up
to an Athlon XP 3200. Make sure you buy a Socket A compatible CPU!
The AMD Socket A motherboards were replaced by the Socket 754, which
were then replaced by the Socket 939s, which will soon be replaced by
the M2 motherboards. These motherboards take CPUs with different pin
configurations so none of them are compatible with each other.

For more information on your board, you might want to check out the
ASUS website, or check this site out:

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2002/asus...3/a7v333p1.htm

Also, for Socket A CPUs, check out Newegg.com.

Xposting snipped.

* * Chas wrote:
My take on that was that the XP numbers was a *counter-marketing* move.
Intel moved to the vastly inferior P4 architecture to keep MHz numbers up as
they knew buyers looked at those. *That* was the original marketing move,
and one that Intel have only recently given up on. AMD simply introduced the
XP number as an indication of what their CPUs could do against the vastly
inferior P4s (although they said the XP number referenced the original
Athlon to head off litigation).

Only now have Intel given up on their dead-end P4 and gone back to improved
versions of the P3 (Pentium M etc). They stuck with a crap architecture for
years simply to try to influence market share by stressing MHz rather than
power. Now they know they're beaten by AMD they've put their tail between
their legs and gone back to a sensible architechture.
--
~Shaun~