DDR vs. SDRAM

[bgfmunda]

Looking for help on upgrading my motherboard. Is DDR twice as fast as SDRAM? Are there any articles/reports that actually show the % increase in speed? Any recommendations on a motherboard? What does one think about a motherboard that has DDR and SDRAM capability?

Any help would be insightful, thanks

bgfmunda

 

[Vette73]

DDR should give you 10-30% better performance depending on the CPU and software you are running.

And boards that have DDR and Sdram will not be as fast, in general, as a only DDR board. And you can't run DDR AND Sdram at the same time.

Best bang for your buck right now, nForce2

 

[bgfmunda]

thanks for the input know of any articles or reports?

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
DDR should give you 10-30% better performance depending on the CPU and software you are running.

And boards that have DDR and Sdram will not be as fast, in general, as a only DDR board. And you can't run DDR AND Sdram at the same time.

Best bang for your buck right now, nForce2

I think best performance is NForce2, but best bang for buck is probably a KT333.
you can get KT333 boards for DIRT cheap now. and there is nothing at all wrong with their performance (better than KT400)

 

[mrman3k]

Anandtech has some good reviews and articles explaining how DDR works if you are interested.

 

[TheWart]

For what it's worth I noticed a large improvement moving from SDRAM to DDR on one of my ECS K7S5a boards.

 

[Nomans]

For what it's worth, the ECS K7S5A is the only mobo I know of that support BOTH DDR (PC2100 only, not PC2700 or faster DDR) and SDRAM on the same board. However, be aware that this is one of the ridiculously cheap mobos ever. The retail price of this mobo is around $50, so don't expect any high quality here. For me, it only served one purpose at that time: be able to upgrade on-the-fly from SDRAM to DDR w/o any hard- and software re-installation including the OS, which it did. Later, I abandon the board when it starts having some hardware problem after a while, such as AC'97 integrated sound, etc.. Otherwise this is a great board for that cheap money.

 

[Praxis]

The Biostar M7VIG (and in January the M7VIG Pro) has two SDRAM slots and two DDR slots, like the K7S5A. Plus, it has S3 Savage 4 integrated video (as well as an AGP slot, if you are not satisfied with the onboard video) and the board is about the same price as the ECS board. Plus, I think it is less picky about RAM and power supplies than the K7S5A.