I built the P3 700e on a P3V4X and it STUNK!

Believe

Junior Member
Dec 15, 2000
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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.

 

compuwiz1

Admin Emeritus Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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So you got a chip that sucked. They dont all do it, and I've found Costa to be the worst, personally. That's why people get pretested chips, to avoid what you went thru. ;)
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
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Had the same problem. Not on a costarica chip though, on a week 18 malay 700

Wouldn't budge above 868. Seen others do the same. Strange that the magical number on these chips is 868?
 

kind-of-blue

Senior member
Nov 17, 1999
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Could it be the reason was the VIA chipset on the P3V4X?

I personally have zero confidance in VIA although I really want a T-Bird...
 

Nessism

Golden Member
Dec 2, 1999
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While the P3V4X is a very nice board, the memory performance is not as good a good BX board. Their are lots of tweaks available however which will bring memory performance up to within 5-10% of BX. For most people this is close enough - unless the user is a benchmark junkie that is.
 

Taz4158

Banned
Oct 16, 2000
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In my experience testing chips, only about 30% of the 700s will do 933. Went through over 40 when we were building some clones to get the one I have. And I must disagree, you can never have enough speed.