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How much of a speed hit will PC133 cause over DDR?

G

GratefullySaved

Senior member
OK PC People, the Macintosh man of mighty moronic musings is confused again....😉

I'm looking to upgrade my gaming machine Abit KT7a mobo (1.2 ghz Athlon, 512 MB PC133, 40 GB 7200 HD, SB Live, blah blah and yawn for the rest of the specs), but I'm looking to do this on a really tight budget...I want to buy a new mobo and maybe a XP2100+ and then OC it if needed, BUT, I'm wondering if my PC133 RAM will transfer to a new mobo without causing any major performance bottlenecks?

My plan is to buy the Biostar M??? (can't remember its product code) for $60, drop in two sticks of my PC133 256MB RAM, buy a 2100+ Thoroughbred, add a GeForce Ti4200 (and OC it to 4400 or 4600 specs), and then use my SB Live, HD, floppy and the rest to go back into my Antec case....

I now the Biostar will support the PC133 RAM, but at what percentage of a performance cost? A 10% loss in overall system speed? More?

Also, is there an Nforce 2 mobo that supports 2 sticks of PC133 as well as DDR RAM? I'd love to go Nforce 2 with onboard sound and LAN WITHOUT having to buy new RAM. I have no budget for RAM unfortunately. (I just got another PC133 256MB for $10 fortunately - God clearly knows my budget 🙂 )

Anyway, I could use some help here and would really appreciate your suggestions..🙂

Thanks,

GS
 
You will probably see a little bit of performance loss compared to DDR. Your OS load times might be a little more, and you might lose 5 fps in a game, but it's really not TOO big of a deal.
 
My father's system which uses the K7S5a board had the PC2100 removed for another system and PC133 of the same size put in. Almost no loss of performance in games, synthetic benchmarks (except memory tests) and everything else. No big difference.
 
Wow so DDR ram does not have a big performence difference in speed on normal computer operations like heavy mult. tasking, gaming at 1024x768 resolution or above, etc ? So it would not be a waste of money going from 256 mb of pc133 cas 2 crucial ram to 512 mb of pc133 cas 2 ram? (As in buying another 256 mb of pc133 cas 2 ram stick) I thought i shouldn't waste my money on sdram sense sooner or later i am sure i will want to or have to upgrade to ddr ram.
 
To a certain point, quantity is more important than speed but speed still helps...if you're benching the memory alone, there will be a noticeable increase. In real world performance of the overall system, there's almost no difference at all. Of course, a 3.06ghz p4 benefits from memory speed increases more than an athlon or p3 because of its heavy penalties paid for cache hits and branch mis-predicts.
 
paralazarguer do you think it would be more smart to wait on a ram upgrade right now intill i can get both a new mobo that supports ddr ram and new ddr ram? Or just buy the extra pc133 cas 2 sdram? I may want to go 1 gig not sure yet.
 
if your going amd get a nforce2 mb. save up for two ram chips (or whatever there called)...with the nforce2 you will notice a diff. worth the wait. I think.
 
according to sandra, the jump to ddr makes a big difference in memory performance.

for example, when i upgraded to a new motherboard /w ddr memory, my 3dmark score went up ~1500 points.
 
paralazarguer do you think it would be more smart to wait on a ram upgrade right now intill i can get both a new mobo that supports ddr ram and new ddr ram? Or just buy the extra pc133 cas 2 sdram? I may want to go 1 gig not sure yet.
Click to expand...

There's no direct answer to that question other than this one:
Ask yourself if you're happy with the SPEED of your system when running a single app. If you are, that means that your processor, RAM, whatever is fast enough. If you experience slowdown when running more than one program at once, more ram is the answer. If you find windows running and no other programs to be slow then you need a processor/ram/harddrive SPEED upgrade, no quantity of ram.
 
Ive got an Athlon XP 2100+ w/ an MSI K7T Turbo2 and 512mb of PC-133. My comp is blazing fast and doesn't seem to be slowed down at all by not using DDR.

3DMark2001 = ~9,000 (Probably would be around 10k w/ DDR, but in real world there isnt much of a difference)
 
according to sandra, the jump to ddr makes a big difference in memory performance.

for example, when i upgraded to a new motherboard /w ddr memory, my 3dmark score went up ~1500 points.
Click to expand...

Yeah, those are both just synthetic benchmarks. When the memory subsystem is isolated (sandra) it seems like a huge performance increase but when factored in with the rest of the system performance the difference is not perceivable to most users. One exception is perhaps gaming where you may see a difference of 10 frames per second or so on a scale of 100fps. This is why you see the increase in 3d mark scores. For this end, though, upgrade money would be better spent on a faster videocard. Once again, the P4 architecture is more sensitive to ram speed than other architectures (especially athlon and G4.)
Hope that helps.
 
OS i don't play unreal 2003 at 640x480. I wish you could of done 1024x768. Anandtech should do a review on sdram vs ddr ram on everyday tasks, gaming, etc! OS i bet at 1024x768 + resolutions sdram vs ddr ram would have smaller increase of percent. i wish i knew the difference but i guess you can guess what 1024x768 difference will be on sdram vs ddr ram from the 640x480 tests maybe.


Os whats the greatest performence difference in fps in games if you overclock you ram vs pc133 sdram please? Also when u overclock your ram you overclock your cpu too correct?

Thanks
 
Originally posted by: imtim83
OS i don't play unreal 2003 at 640x480. I wish you could of done 1024x768. Anandtech should do a review on sdram vs ddr ram on everyday tasks, gaming, etc! OS i bet at 1024x768 + resolutions sdram vs ddr ram would have smaller increase of percent. i wish i knew the difference but i guess you can guess what 1024x768 difference will be on sdram vs ddr ram from the 640x480 tests maybe.


Os whats the greatest performence difference in fps in games if you overclock you ram vs pc133 sdram please? Also when u overclock your ram you overclock your cpu too correct?

Thanks
Click to expand...

You should read the thread. The reason I didn't do 1024 is because then the video is the bottleneck. But you seem to know that anyways.

I don't have that setup anymore. I'll just say the biggest difference I saw was about 10% between DDR and SDR for the same chipset.



 
IMO: You'll see a huge performance difference between DDR400 and PC133.
I had a similar system (A7V133, Athlon-C 1.4G, 512MB PC133, etc.), upgraded (or bought a new system to be exact) to A7N8X, Athlon-XP 1700+, 512MB PC3200C2 and it made a huge difference.
Even my GF4 TI4200 is a lot happier with the new system 😉

just my 0.02$
 
MO: You'll see a huge performance difference between DDR400 and PC133.
Click to expand...

On a P4, yes. On an athlon, not so much. You more likely saw a speed increase due to other factors such as faster chipset, faster processor being combined with faster ram.
 
Originally posted by: bigpow
IMO: You'll see a huge performance difference between DDR400 and PC133.
I had a similar system (A7V133, Athlon-C 1.4G, 512MB PC133, etc.), upgraded (or bought a new system to be exact) to A7N8X, Athlon-XP 1700+, 512MB PC3200C2 and it made a huge difference.
Even my GF4 TI4200 is a lot happier with the new system 😉

just my 0.02$
Click to expand...

Errr... unless you're overclocking your memory and running async from your FSB, your DDR400 is really running at DDR266 with your 1700+.
 
I suggest you buy the newest 1800+ T-Bred B which is unlocked and run it in your current motherboard. I am running a 1800+ in my Asus A7V at 1900MHz. 🙂 A nice upgrade from 900MHz.
 

I suggest you buy the newest 1800+ T-Bred B which is unlocked and run it in your current motherboard.
_________________________________________________________________________________________


Yeah, that was my plan, but I bought the Abit KT7a mobo from Overclockerz, and they sent me a KT7a RAID because they screwed up my order. Turns out that KT7a RAID is the ONE AND ONLY board out of that line-up that won't support an XP chip, even with BIOS flashings. I have the ver 1.1 RAID mobo, and it drives me a little nuts to look back on all this. They tried to help I guess, but now I'm even worse off, as now I have to spend another $100 to even consider buying a new XP chip... sigh (and laughing)

It's OK though, God is in control and I'm sure he's gonna bless me through this.

Anyone want to trade mobos? ha ha

Thanks you guys, this thread has really been helpful.

GS
 
😉

You're absolutely correct!

I'm running it at 202MHz FSB and 100% RAM to BUS synch. with 4-2-2-2 timing.

🙂
 
GratefullySaved guess what? i took the chance and brought a Athlon XP 1800 + for my Abit KT7A raid mobo. (Which i believe is revision 1.0 or 1.1. Forgot which one but i know its one of those. I will check again if you want me too) But i got it to work fine i would say. Yes i had a few problems at first where i couldn't install windows without it freezing up or bootup into windows without it freezing up after a few secs. I fixed all of that. So far i don't have any problems i would say. I am going to get a new mobo sooner or later but i didn't really want to spend the extra money yet to get a new mobo. I don't know if i am lucky or what. Just to let you know during the time i upgraded to both a Athlon XP 1800+ CPU and a GF4 ti 4400 video card. So who knows it could of been a problem with either of them or both. It took a while to fix but still at least its fixed. I was reading how people with their Abit KT7A raid mobo (revision 1.0 and 1.1) were getting Athlon XPs to work on their mobos. So i chose to take the risk. I don't remember if i flashed my bios or not. i may have but can't remember.
 
OS yep i did read the thread where you said that just didn't mention that. Sorry about that. 10% is ok but nothing to big of a difference and thats at only 640x480. Once you raise the resolution it becomes more a video card and cpu bottleneck than memory so i am sure at 1024x768 + resolution its only 1 to 5%. I guess every bit helps but still.
 
Intim you rock! 🙂 I thought about trying it anyway also, but I posted a question to this board if anyone had tried it and I really got no encouragement or tips, so I backed off. I think I'm going to try the same thing then, but can you tell me what you did to fix your system? I'm not an expert troubleshooter by any means, so I may need to use you as my "lifeline" anandtech friend? 🙂 Is your system super stable now though, that would be my only concern. I too just bought the Ti4200, and am OCing it, but adding an XP1800 and OCing THAT would be a great finishing touch. 🙂

Thanks so much, I can't wait to hear from you.

GS

P.S. - I'm sending this message verbatim to you via PM, so excuse the redundancy, I just want to be sure you get my questions...
 
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