Need a little help designing a P4 system

[sohcrates]

I'm working with someone to design a P4 system for a CAD operation system at his work (architecture firm)

They've got AMD systems, but the operator really wants to stick with Pentium for some reason

I'm am just about as clueless about P4's as you can be....my world revolves around Athlons these days....

I've read Anand's 845 mobo roundup, and it seems that a DDR based system would work better than doing Rambus or whatever.

He'd probably be looking at a P4 1.4 Ghz and Crucial PC2100 DDR (where would I even buy Rambus if i wanted to?)

Beyond that, I guess i'm looking for mobo suggestions. I'm assuming Asus is leading the way these days, but need some input

Thanks!

 

[oldfart]

i850/RDRAM (Rambus) is still the fastest solution. RDRAM prices have dropped to very reasonable levels ($75 for Samsung 256 meg). Googlegear has good prices on boxed CPU's mobos and RDRAM. Newegg is also a good place.

 

[Insane3D]

"i850/RDRAM (Rambus) is still the fastest solution. RDRAM prices have dropped to very reasonable levels ($75 for Samsung 256 meg). Googlegear has good prices on boxed CPU's mobos and RDRAM. Newegg is also a good place. "

I thought i850 was outperformed by the Sis645 with PC2700 (DDR333) memory? Either one should be a good choice...

 

[Duvie]

I think I saw that review as well insane3d...sis seems to be making some pretty good chipsets...I can't wait for sis745 for the athlon...


To bad your friend wants to stick with p4....Since I run cadd programs daily I can tell you from personal experience the p4 and its underpowered fpu really hurts in cadd operations...I would liken a 1.4p4 to probably the performance of a 1.0-1.1gig tbird. A friend of mines p4 1.3 with the rdram (pc600 dell I believe) feels slower then the 933mhz p3 we have at work...This ofcoursde is all backed up in countless reviews...

 

[sohcrates]

<< I think I saw that review as well insane3d...sis seems to be making some pretty good chipsets...I can't wait for sis745 for the athlon...


To bad your friend wants to stick with p4....Since I run cadd programs daily I can tell you from personal experience the p4 and its underpowered fpu really hurts in cadd operations...I would liken a 1.4p4 to probably the performance of a 1.0-1.1gig tbird. A friend of mines p4 1.3 with the rdram (pc600 dell I believe) feels slower then the 933mhz p3 we have at work...This ofcoursde is all backed up in countless reviews... >>



I totally agree...unfortunately, this dude hasn't come into the new world of AMD...it's his CAD station and that's what he wants.

Can anyone recommend any specific boards? Should i just stick with what Anand recommended?

I've also read about the Sis 645....and i read that crucial pc2100 ddr *should* o/c up to 333 w/out a problem...but i worry about the long term stability of that move...

 

[Duvie]

Go with what anand recommends....

I alos disagree with the crucial statement as many have not been able to boost it to 166mhz...that will need a ddr voltage adjustments to get stability out of them. Now I am not syaing it can't be done but results may vary considerably and may be unachieveable with the memory you may receive...get the rated pc2700 ddr

 

[Diable]

If you want to use DDRAM I would go with either a Asus P4S333 or a Intel D845BG. The Asus board uses the SiS645 chipset and has all the overclocking and memory tweaking options you could want while the Intel board want let you tweak a damn thing but it will be stable as hell. If you decide to use RDRAM get the Asus P4T-E, its probably the best i850 board available. The one in my comp hasn't given me a single problem and it runs a 1.5GHz P4 overcloked to 1.88GHz(15x125mhz with the ram mulitplier set to 4x )24 hours a day. The board ain't cheap(around $150 without audio)but its worth it.