Never thought I'd say this... school me on the P4

[StattlichPassat]

Before we go on, don't turn this into a vs. flame thread. I'm an AMD zealot, yes, but in light of the new P4 Northwood's impressive benchmarks, I'd like to learn more about this CPU I've purposely neglected without mercy because of poor performance initially. I knew Intel, being the bigger company, would eventually come back from being clocked <pun intended> by AMD back in 1999, and now they have. I'm an experienced system builder and know just about everything about AMD platforms, but don't have the foggiest what an i845 is. Igornant to RAMBUS. No clue what the good HSFs are for these processors. So please give me a rundown of the chipsets, FSBs and memory stuff from the P4's initial release to the new 2.5GHz 533MHz FSB chip that was just released, so I can make reasonable product choices *IF* I were to start building Northwood systems (what do I need to be looking for/need to know?)- I would greatly appreciate it! TIA.

 

[teckmaster]

like you, I do not do much with the Intel chips. I do however, have 3 dual Pentium 4 Xeon 1.8GHz servers. The only thing I can really help you with is rambus. Pretty much the only thing you need to know about it, is that Intel won't be using it much longer. It didn't hit the market like they thought it would and you can find most Pentium 4 motherboards accepting DDR memory instead.

 

[Athlon4all]

Well there are 2 types of fsb's. 133Mhz QDR and 100MHz QDR (533 and 400MHz effective). The 533fsb is only avialable on 2.26, 2.4B and 2.53GHz and up. 100fsb is on all P4's other than the ones mentioned. There are a bunch of past chipsets, but I am going to focus on the main new chipsets that support offically the 533fsb.

SiS 645DX: DDR333 support, and unoffical DDR400 support. Great chipset
Intel 845E: DDR266 Support. Great overclocking.
Intel 845G: Supposed to support DDR333, Integrated Graphics.
Intel 850e: RDRAM support (No PC1066 oficcaly however)

Those are the main P4 Chipsets. 850e Is the best, but most prefer DDR. The performance difference between DDR and RDRAM (espcially with PC1066) is definately there, and I'd rec. going RDRAM. Although PC1066 has yet to hit the market, most PC800 runs easily at PC1066. What HSF's? Retail. These Retail HSF's are great for ocing, and they're quite so you can bet that they are good for OEM systems, and ocing alike.

Now for older chipsets, well here goes:

Intel 850: no 533fsb support, PC800 RDRAM supported. Fastest chipset for the P4 for a long time.
Intel 845 (aka 845-S): SDRAM support only, no 533fsb support. Slowest chipset for P4. Do yourself a favor and AVOID!!!
Intel 845-D: 845 with DDR266 support, no 533fsb support. Stable, great for ocing like all Intel chipsets. Slightly slower than SiS 645 even when 645 uses DDR266, the gap widens when 645 uses DDR333
SiS 645: DDR333 support, competes with 850 with PC800 RDRAM. Great chipset, stable.
SiS 650: 645 with Integrated Graphics
VIA P4X266: ssshhhh. This is the chipset never sanctioned by Intel, its stability isn't great, and its only on a few boards. DDR266 support, no 533fsb. Avoid. 845-D is a better option.

I hope this is good stuff for you. If you got any more questions, just PM me and you'll definately get a response from me, although if in the thread I might not see it

 

[Pocatello]

Is it true that intel won't support Rambus in the future? I thought that the Pentium IV processors work best with Rambus type memory.

 

[oldfart]

One thing to keep in mind is "official" Vs non official support of bus and mem speeds. This holds true for many of the chipsets Athlon4all mentions. Here is one example using my P4 1.6A @ 2.4 EPOX i845D setup. the i845D officially supports 400 MHz FSB, DDR200. The mobo mfgrs put plenty of good "unofficial" features in. You can very easily run 533 FSB DDR355 on this board with complete stability. I run 600 FSB DDR400. On the 845 side of things, the 845E just made 533 FSB official.

 

[StattlichPassat]

Thanks for the excellent information! I'm soaking it all up with aplomb, even though I feel dirty...

Keep the input coming, folks- I greatly appreciate it.

 

[Athlon4all]

<< Is it true that intel won't support Rambus in the future? I thought that the Pentium IV processors work best with Rambus type memory. >>

Its kinda up in the air. There is no mention of a new RDRAM chipset now after 850e, the next high end chipset from Intel is supposed to be a DUal Channel DDR, however, I am convinced that RDRAM will not die. It is here to stay for the rest of the year and despite 850e has no offical PC1066 support, it easily runs at that speed. All you have to do is have RAM that can run at PC1066 and you have to increase the RDRAM/fsb multiplier from 3x to 4x.

Oldfart is correct. I only game the offical support on the older chipset. That being said, the older chipsets can be overclocked. For example:

1. Many people on 845-D have systems running at speeds between DDR333 and DDR400 depending on the board and CPU overclock
2. Almost every single 845-D, SiS 645, and the 850 based Abit TH7II and Asus P4T-E all can unoffically run at 133MHz fsb
3. Like I stated 850e does not offically suppot PC1066, but it works fine with it. Same goes with SiS 645DX and DDR400 support.

 

[oldfart]

<< even though I feel dirty... >>


You'll get over it