For all those who were waiting for DDR...

[Oblique]

Including me, you might check out this eye-opening article
Whelp, I don't know about you guys, but i'm going with pc-133 and KT133A. So where can a mobo be found that is based on this?

 

[noxipoo]

they aren't out yet. i would still go with DDR though anyway.

 

[Vegito]

It looks like early implementation sucks big time.... definitely NOT worth the extra hundreds of bucks. In theory DDR is a lot faster and stuff... a benchmark will kill that theory...

At least SDRAM is dirt cheap now and you can BUY a lot of it...

 

[Oblique]

What is the ETA on the KT133A-based motherboards?

 

[Dulanic]

You also have to remeber these are brand new right now... the price difference will not be as much given a little time.

 

[SUOrangeman]

Amen! On products are on the market, the price differences will almost be negligible.

I'll be tracking the prices with Project Jukebox (see link below). Feel free to come along for the ride.

-SUO

 

[Soccerman]

DDR SDRAM is nonetheless a very important technology. it DOES offer a benefit (8% above KT133A is rather small), but not much, because as Anand stated, the Athlon is designed around SDRAM, so slow RAM is part of the game.

IF however, AMD releases the thoroughbred designed for DDR SDRAM, I wouldn't be surprised if it is better..

Recap, FSB is very important for the Athlon. With Linpack, it SHOULD be RAM througput being the biggest problem.. thus, it leads me to conclude that, yes increased FSB is part of the solution, BECAUSE the CPU is doing more then just that one program (how would you then test it in a pure environment? boot the computer to an OS you trust, in this case, you'd have to boot it to a testing OS, made only for this application, which is running tests, and nothing else.

RAM throughput is important when it is the limiting factor. in this case, I don't think it is, because I think the FSB isn't fast enough to keep up with whatever else is going on BESIDES the RAM througput.

P4 has such a fast FSB, that it can do that kind of thing.

An Athlon with equivalent fsb speed (200mhz, 400mhz effective), as well as RAM speed, would undoubtably feature at, or near P4 speeds in Linpack. with slower DDR SDRAM (say PC2100), the performance would definetly suffer in this situation, but with DDR SDRAM capable of 3.2 gig's a second, it would definaetly be on par with the P4, when paired with a 200mhz FSB (400mhz effective, for those who need to be clear).

this is the EXACT reason why I think AMD should ramp up FSB speeds all the way. they most likely will anyway with the Thoroughbred version of the Athlon.
however, I could be wrong..