Good board that supports SD & DDR ram ????

[DaAvatar]

Whats a good board that gives you the option of using SD or DDR ram for an XP chip ?

 

[Buz2b]

ECS K7S5A.

 

[MichaelD]

Rather than answer your question directly, I'd like to play Devil's Advocate.

Possbily, you don't know, so I'll help you.

With the maturity of today's DDR chipsets (KT333 for example) and low prices for mobos (Epox 8K5A2 for example) and outrageously low prices on quality CPUs (XP1600 AGOIA-stepping from Newegg, for example) it's kind of silly (no offense) to consider a SDR/DDR motherboard.

I understand that you may have 1GB of PC133 and dont' really want to spend the money on a stick of DDR...but you can sell that 133 memory to help you recoup whatever monies you spend on the DDR rig.

Here are some prices for you. All from Newegg, and Crucial For ease of searching.


Epox 8K5A2 mobo: $116
XP1600 AGOIA stepping $56 <----this CPU, in this mobo, w/PC2700 memory will do 10.5 x 166 for a 1.75GHz CPU! For $56!!! :Q
256mb stick of Crucial (Micron PC2700 CAS 2.5 ) memory $74
Total: $246

Not a bad price for a 1.75GHz DDR rig. Couple this rig w/a quality PS and at least a GF3/ATI 8500 video card and you have a screaming rig.

Convinced yet?

 

[Peter]

Considering that K7S5A costs half of the board you suggested, and that DDR266 RAM costs twice as much as the same amount and quality of PC133, you throw a lot of money after not quite so much of a performance increase ... and the path to DDR RAM is still open on K7S5A.

regards, Peter

 

[MichaelD]

Hi Peter,

While it's true that the ECS board is very inexpensive, I'd hardly say the performance gain is "not all that much." A DDR rig is much snappier in everyday performance and shows very tangible increases in both benchmarks and "seat of the pants" use.

But, you are correct; the ECS system would be much cheaper, especially if he already has the PC133 to put in it. That ECS board isn't exactly tweakable though...kind of limiting for any kind of OCing or future expansion. *shrug* I just thought I'd offer my $.02.

 

[Peter]

Yes sure there is a performance delta, but is it worth $130?

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Peter
Yes sure there is a performance delta, but is it worth $130?

*shrugs* It depends on the user and what they do with the system and how "committed" they are to the hobby.

I can't afford to be "bleeding edge" but I like to have the newer stuff...kinda "wounded edge" if you will.

If DaAvatar already has an AthlonXP of some flavor and he already has the PC133 and he doesn't mind the very few OCing possibilities the ECS board offers and he doesn't want to spend more than $100, then the ECS board is his best option. It is indeed a very stable board.

But, if he still needs to buy an XP (1600 AGOIA for $54 at Newegg...does 1.75GHz w/o breaking a sweat!). Still needs to buy a mobo....well...I still say go DDR!!! But if money is a huge issue, then the ECS is it. Later, gentlemen.

 

[zeroidea]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
I can't afford to be "bleeding edge" but I like to have the newer stuff...kinda "wounded edge" if you will.

Also known as The Trailng Edge, home of Tardy Adopters.

I'd like to learn of some more boards besides the K7S5A too. I'm guessing only SiS 645 and earlier chipsets? Since such configurations were/are rather transitional, a point in time which seems to have now passed..

 

[Regalk]

Just to add my bit:
I believe that no matter what you build NEVER never go cheap on the motherboard & RAM but then thats me. Go cheap on everything else.

 

[Vette73]

Originally posted by: Regalk
Just to add my bit:
I believe that no matter what you build NEVER never go cheap on the motherboard & RAM but then thats me. Go cheap on everything else.

I agree. It is easy to upgrade a AGP video card or hard drive, But to go to faster Ram or a faster CPU the BOARD must support it. The board is the last thing you should go cheap on. You can get a Good Epox KT333 board with the 8235 southbridge pretty cheap now, and it has on-board sound, raid, etc...

 

[Mustanggt]

My wife needs a upgrade she allready has pc133 ram, It makes more sense to me to go with ECS K7S5A, and XP 1600 for $108 rather than spend $250, she has a celeron 500 now so this upgrade will give her huge increase in performance, she does not overclock and there really is not a big difference in the $108 upgrade from the $250 upgrade.

 

[Kazuo]

There's a new BIOS hack for the K7S5A called CheepoBIOS which is kept up to date (the new one is the Aug. 9th 2002 BIOS hacked) that supports new FSBs and things like that for the K7S5A. IIRC it even supports 333MHz FSB CPUs and keeps the PCI bus at 33MHz. Pretty snazzy. So... you could use that and get a lot of the KT333 benefits, if the chipset doesn't fry Anyway, that's just my $.02, do as you like.
My roommate uses a K7S5A and overall he seems somewhat pleased with it. It has had some issues in the past. Someone said it prefers ATi video cards to nVidia, and he's using a GeForce2 Ti.
He hasn't had any real problems with it recently though.
And for $53 you get a board with ethernet onboard, choice of RAM and a reasonable level of upgrading to be allowed. Oh well, it won't take Bartons, so what Hopefully by then, KT333 and KT400 boards will be just as cheap anyway.
Overall, the K7S5A is a nice board to start your AthlonXP (or Duron) usage out with. Just get the CheepoBIOS and you'll be good to go. Don't get the one with Fast Writes though, I hear it's too aggressively timed and crashes constantly!

 

[cmdrdredd]

IMO if you're not a gamer then you really don't NEED the fastest memory around. Unless you're Video editing or doing any professional work. You can get by with PC133 in most applications even light gaming.

I do however feel it's better to upgrade to DDR now anyway just to avoid the upgrade later. A Stick of PC2700 can be had for around $100 if you shop right.

 

[Kazuo]

Haha. "Even light gaming." Cracks me up. I've got a KT133A board (K7VZA 3.0) with an AthlonXP 1600+ and a Radeon 9000 and it plays everything in existence today pretty admirably. UT 2003 runs at a pretty good framerate (never had it below acceptable levels). Grand Theft Auto III seems to run a little slow when I set it a bit too aggressive, but all games are playable. And I don't blame poor framerates on the SDRAM either. It's the video card, plain and simple. If you get a nice video card, you can handle gaming. That's just the way it is. Well, with a 1.4GHz processor anyway. PC133 is plenty fast for that sort of thing, unless you REALLY need like 300fps in Q3A. Personally, I settle for 60 or 70
As for video editing, DDR is king. There's no way around it. You need bandwidth.
I definitely agree that getting PC2700 now is the ONLY way to go. Should you ever want to upgrade, you may as well pop for the extra $10 for the PC2700 and then you won't have to worry when 333MHz FSB becomes commonplace. I think the K7S5A is a fine motherboard for an intermediate step anyway. For most uses, it's very fast. It's faster than the KT266 chipset, anyway, which is faster than KT133A. When you're ready to upgrade to an XP 2800+ cheaply, the KT333/400 boards will be cheap too, no doubt.
But I also think that you could do worse than having the upgrade path the K7S5A allows for.
Now, also, I think an XP 2000+ with PC133 might be faster than a 1600+ with PC2100 DDR. I could be wrong, but rather than spending money on RAM, buying a faster CPU is also an option. There's a lot of ways to get that performance up.
I'm not entirely sure that it'll help too much to get a faster CPU though. When I went from a 1.2GHz Thunderbird to an XP 1600+, my 3DMark 2001 SE score went from 5670 to 5971, which is like 5% increase for a 16% clock speed increase. Not too good... maybe RAM is causing a bottleneck. But hey, if you want a cheap upgrade, K7S5A. Definitely. Get the CheepoBIOS and you'll have a pretty nice enthusiast-ready board.

 

[cmdrdredd]

when playing online...with rockets etc flying all over and everyone chatting your framerate dips way way down. That 60fps average means you are dropping way to 20fps at times. I'd rather have a MINIMUM of 60fps than an average of 60.

By light gaming I mean casual play. Just for fun and such. Heavy gaming would involve online play and high detail on about everything you are playing. This is the difference I see.

 

[Kazuo]

That can be fixed easily enough with a new video card though. I'm using an OEM Radeon 9000. That's a pretty low-end card for this generation of hardware. For another $50 you get a GeForce4 Ti4200, which I'm sure would fix most of the speeds just as well as popping for a DDR DIMM would, if not causing more of a difference.

 

[cmdrdredd]

heh...think so huh?

You cannot rely on a video card if your system is limiting the card. It doesn't get the data fast enough and you have a waste of a good card.

 

[Kazuo]

That'd be true if bottlenecks had actual maxima. Since odds are you aren't getting a maximum stream to the video card all of the time, bandwidth isn't linear. Hence, video card improvements increase performance regardless. I'm not saying you don't see an improvement with DDR, mind you, but it's only maybe 10 or 15% typically. Upgrading the CPU or GPU has a larger effect than that if you play your cards right. I wish I had a GeForce4Ti 4200 sitting around to test this, because I'd test the 4200 with SDRAM on the motherboard against my Radeon 9000 with DDR SDRAM on the motherboard, and we'd see which one would win. I'm gonna guess it'd be the 4200 with SDRAM. And since odds are you'd have to pay $50 to switch out your SDRAM for DDR SDRAM, it's a fair test as far as economics are concerned.
OK, maybe you'd start to see more of a performance difference at higher resolutions, of that I'm not quite sure what'd happen. Anyone care to do this test?

 

[cmdrdredd]

seeing how SDRAM already cripples your CPU which in turn cripples your video you're doing yourself a diservice to NOT upgrade for the extra money. It's not that much of a difference.

 

[Kazuo]

Errr... the hell it isn't. Crucial.com for example: PC2700 256MB is $73ish last I checked. PC2100 is around $63. PC133 ECC registered is $60 for 512MB.
I'd call that a pretty decent difference. And besides, for people on a budget, DDR is still prohibitively expensive. You pay as much as SDRAM for half the RAM, and a whole 10-20% performance increase which may or may not be used in someone's real-world apps. As far as a lot of video editing goes, 512MB of PC133 is going to be a lot more useful than 256MB of PC2100, simply because it won't have to read from the disk nearly as much. And 512MB is like having greater than double the usable RAM than 256 because of OS overhead. That's useful for video capturing.
Now, it may sound like I'm totally for SDRAM and that DDR sucks, which is just not the case. It's just that, being on a very tight budget myself, I can understand why people would prefer SDRAM systems to DDR. The performance difference just doesn't justify the difference in price. It's like an XP 2000+ when XP 1600+ processors cost half as much. In most apps you barely notice the difference anyway. So, let the people pick their RAM based on their needs, rather than badgering them into buying DDR because you think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Is the K7S5A, in your estimation, a good board that supports both SDR and DDR SDRAM or not? And if not, what is?