Ace's P4 Platform Comparision is up!

[Athlon4all]

Ace's Hardware has done a massive review of several Pentium 4 Platforms here. He overclocks 850 to PC1066+533fsb, and compares it to a baunch of other platforms and boards, it's just a ton of data. Great stuff though. Take a look before buying a P4!

 

[tigerbait]

<< Take a look before buying a P4! >>



:Q I just ordered a P4S333 and P4 1.6a

but the sis 645 and pc2700 seemed to do ok

 

[MadRat]

Whoops, putting that XP2000+ in there really clutters up those benchmarks. Its strange they'd put it in rather than clarify their Pentium 4 systems better. I find the charts hard to follow at times with so much clutter. They could have simply put all of the benchmarks in the same order to help clarify which system was/did what.

 

[fkloster]

<< So while PC2100/2700 is a good choice for the average desktop, it is clear that DDR doesn't cut it for the power user, especially if this power user prefers a highly-clocked Northwood processor. Registered (buffered) DDR is a solution for the workstation user who needs a lot of RAM, but it is not really a high-performance solution (higher latencies, bandwidth limited to 2.1 GB/s). >>

 

[Tom]

Unfortunately the review doesn't give a fair representation of the current state of affairs with regards to P4 DDR boards. The relevent setup with P4s and DDR boards are the following...

a P4 1.8a Northwood overclocked to 2.4 bying upping the FSB from 100 to 133, keeping everything in spec..or..
a P4 1.6a Northwood overclocked to 2.1 by upping the FSB from 100 to 133, keeping everything in spec.

and using either an Intel i845D board with memory at 1:1 (133x2=266)
or a Sis645 board with memory at 4:5(166x2=333)

These are the systems that need to be compared to similarly priced Athlon systems and a similarly overclocked rdram system. This review still doesn't answer this question.

 

[saltedeggman]

thx for head up

waiting for hammer!!

 

[MadRat]

<<a P4 1.8a Northwood overclocked to 2.4 bying upping the FSB from 100 to 133, keeping everything in spec..or... a P4 1.6a Northwood overclocked to 2.1 by upping the FSB from 100 to 133, keeping everything in spec.

and using either an Intel i845D board with memory at 1:1 (133x2=266)
or a Sis645 board with memory at 4:5(166x2=333)

These are the systems that need to be compared to similarly priced Athlon systems and a similarly overclocked rdram system. This review still doesn't answer this question.>>

I don't agree about wasting time comparing to an AMD system. The review was about Pentium 4 chipsets and how the different memory configurations make a difference. Having a P4-1.6A@2.13GHz+333DDR would have been a good comparison to the 2.2GHz P4-A with PC800/PC1066 at 400fsb.

 

[JackBurton]

That's cool. It looks like the 845D chipset fared well against the i850, and that was at a 100MHz FSB. I agree, they should have compared the i845D to the i850 both running at 133MHz FSB (266 vs 533). I know DDR (i845D) runs a little slower than RDRAM (i850) but like I said, it is only a little behind and MUCH less of a headache overclocking a P4 to its max on a DDR based system rather than RDRAM based. And hell, I got the Asus P4B266-C for $117!

 

[Texmaster]

<< Ace's Hardware has done a massive review of several Pentium 4 Platforms here. He overclocks 850 to PC1066+533fsb, and compares it to a baunch of other platforms and boards, it's just a ton of data. Great stuff though. Take a look before buying a P4! >>



Dammit. Another article that uses a DDR motherboard without the 3:4 overclocking margin on the ram. :|

The performance is DRASTICALLY increased on the DDR option using the 3:4 overclocking option like on the Asus P42bb


I'm getting sick of reviewers overlooking that aspect.

 

[PlatinumGold]

tex

how does performance increase w/ 3:4 ratio??

do you mean ur running ur ram faster than FSB? or FSB is faster than ram?

I know u can get a higher OC w/ FSB running faster than ram but i'm still not convinced that makes the whole system faster.

i can take my p4 to 150 FSB if i use the 3:4 ratio running ram slower, but i'm not sure that would be faster than fsb 135 w/ ram at 270.

 

[Dimitri]

huh? The 3:4 ratio is system bus:memory not memory:system bus. It's there so the in spec 100mhz system bus will still run the RAM at 133. For my Asus p4b266 I increased my 3dmark2001 score by 350 points lowering the system bus 133 to 132 and changing the cpu:memory ratio from 1:1 to 3:4, essentially overclocking the ram to 166/333 (almost). Of course, I could be talking out my rear end. 😛

 

[JackBurton]

<< Dammit. Another article that uses a DDR motherboard without the 3:4 overclocking margin on the ram.

The performance is DRASTICALLY increased on the DDR option using the 3:4 overclocking option like on the Asus P42bb


I'm getting sick of reviewers overlooking that aspect.
>>


Tex, Dimitri is right, you can set the FSB/mem ratio to 3:4 ONLY under 133MHz FSB. After you hit 133MHz FSB you are stuck at 1:1. So you'll have to do benchmarks to see which one runs faster, 132MHz FSB at 3:4 or 140FSB at 1:1. But you're right, they should have set the memory to 3:4 since they didn't even bother running the board at 133MHz (looks like they left it at default 100MHz)! :|

P.S. Tex, on your rig profile you have your mobo as P4T266. Either Asus has a new board out or you can't let the memory of your P4T-E die. 😉

 

[MadRat]

Any new comparisons up to show P4's above 2GHz with DDR333/400 vs. PC1066/1200?

 

[GL]

I've got a MSI 645 Ultra and Crucial CAS 2.5 PC2100 DDR with an overclocked 1.6a.

Here's what I'm running at:
CPU - 2208MHz
FSB - 552 MHz QDR
Memory - 344 MHz DDR using the "Ultra" timings profile in the BIOS

The MSI board allows me to run at 138MHz and run the memory at 172MHz (4:5).

With these settings, I benchmark about 6% higher than PC800 RDRAM under SiSoft Sandra in the memory bandwidth tests. I don't think I could hold a candle to PC1066 RDRAM, but it's not too far behind.