Posted a thread a couple of days ago here asking what chip to put onto a P3V4X and got a lot of GOOD comment. then did some more research (overclockers.com mostly) and agreed with the concensus opinion here to get a 700e. got a costa rica SL3XM, week 34, cBO stepping. even though several guys have gotten the SL3XM up to 1100+ (overclockers data base) with water cooling, i could only get this ah heck to 868 (7 X 124/31). heat wasnt a prob, i tried everything i could think of. then i thought, well ill take this guy back and get a 933 certified chip, but lets see what 868 is like compared to the 519 im used to (4.5 x 115/38) on my trusy old p2 300 SL2YK. everything was a little crisper of course, but other than large file transfers (eg, making Ghost image files) i didnt notice any big speed increases in daily activities. guess i shouldnt be surprised, but i was. Sandra 2001 CPU benchmarks increased from 1401/697 to 2346/1168, not bad. but the memory benchmarks were actually LOWER with the 868 than with the 519. I thought the mem bus was clocked to the FSb, and i have them both running 1/1. so the 700 running at 124fsb should give a better mem bandwidth than the p2 300 with a 115fsb. the only explaination i can think of is that the pci bus is UNDERCLOCKED on the 700e (31mhz) and OVERCLOCKED on the p2 300 (38.3). but i dont see why that would effect the mem bus.
anyway, what i learned mainly, i think, is that since im not a gamer 500 vs 900 Mhz doesnt really make a meaningful difference to me, and im just going to keep the p2 300 until i make a MEANINGFUL change to something with A LOT MORE mem bandwidth,like a p4.
anyway, what i learned mainly, i think, is that since im not a gamer 500 vs 900 Mhz doesnt really make a meaningful difference to me, and im just going to keep the p2 300 until i make a MEANINGFUL change to something with A LOT MORE mem bandwidth,like a p4.
