AMD 761 DDR boards with >2 DIMMs?

[NumberCruncher]

Does anyone know of any AMD 761 based boards with more than 2 DIMM slots? The only one I've discovered is the Gigabyte 7DXR. It seems that all the other well-regarded boards have only 2 (Epox, ASUS, etc..). I don't want to pay the huge premium for 512MB DDR DIMMs, but I want more than 512MB total RAM. Also, can anyone recommend a place that builds systems with these boards? I don't want to build a new system from scratch myself...

 

[salman327]

Well just to let you know, even if you did want to use all 3 slots on that Gigabyte board, you'd have to pay even more, because it can only run w/ registered ram (If you want to fill all 3, if only 2 then you can use regular ram). It'll push your ram from cas2 to cas3 (Seeing that the registered ram i've seen is ECC). There are no motherboards that will have more than 2 that can use regular unbuffered ram, simply because it's the limit of the AMD 761 chipset. Even the upcoming (Mid July) Abit KG-7 has 4 slots, but again if you want to use all 4 (or 3) slots instead of just the 2 unbuffered, you need registered ram.

 

[IdahoB]

Best thing to do is live with 256 at the moment, then get a 512 when the sticks come out at a reasonable price - tis what I'm doing

 

[NumberCruncher]

Actually, according to the Crucial web site, a 256 MB DDR PC2100 registered ECC DIMM (with CAS 2.5) goes for $70.19 while the standard PC2100 goes for 59.39 -- not much of a price difference. On the other hand, I think that 512MB PC2100 DDR goes for about $500, that's about $360 more than going with 2x256 of the ECC stuff. I realize that there will be a small performance penalty if I go with ECC, but I bet I could get that performance back and more using just some of the $360 savings on the rest of the system (I could go Ultra 160 SCSI at 10,000 rpm ...)...

 

[Doomguy]

You can disable the ECC on ECC memory in the bios so it wont slow you down.

 

[SpeedTrap]

get the ecc you dotn have as many crashes due to the memory cathing the errors . i had ECC sdram and i never had a windows crash in 6 months

 

[hokahknow]

Just go with the 2 256MB DDR and then get a K7 MASTER-S with onboard SCSI. Then upgrade the ram later. This way you have onboard SCSI (if you plan to do the SCSI route)

 

[Odeen]

Actually, it is the "register" chips on the DIMM that push your CAS rating from 2 to 3. ECC adds a small checksum calculation/correction delay, but the "register" chips go ahead and get the data, amplify the signal, and send it along. That's what adds another cycle of latency.