New Dell PIV systems - do they really need 333Mhz memory?

[adlep]

Froom the Rage3d.com -

The system now includes a 15" LCD monitor for $649 shipped! It comes with a 2.53Ghz Pentium 4 processor with the faster 533Mhz system bus, 128mb of 333Mhz DDR SDRAM (this faster memory requires the faster 533Mhz bus processor purchase)(?????), 40x10x40 CD-RW drive (a free upgrade, which expires 10/23/02), a 60GB 7200RPM Ultra/ATA100 hard drive, and a 10/100 NIC.

Are they telling the truth or it is just a marketing hoax?
I mean, the "new" 533Mhz system bus Pentiums do operate at 133 Mhz x 4 = 533Mhz.?
So I would say that the regular PC2100 DDR stick would do just fine for an office system (I wont overclock)?
Am I missing something here?

 

[Pink0]

Yes, PC2100 will be fine for an office machine. I'm not sure how dell's bioses work. I don't know if it will throttle down the existing DDR333. I imaging that you'll remove that stick? It's prolly SPD so it should.

 

[oldfart]

The new Dells are shipping with 845PE chipset mobos which now have "official" DDR333 support. I would assume the system ships with DDR333 enabled via the 4:5 ratio. PC2100 is only spec'd to DDR266 speeds. This is not a maketing trick. They do use DDR333 (PC2700)

FSB x 2 (for DDR) x 1.25 (mem ratio)
133 x 2 x 1.25 = 333

Using DDR266 via the 1:1 ratio (not sure what you can change on a Dell BIOS) would decrease performance.

 

[adlep]

Sweet!
Interesting engineering....Thx for an expanation....

 

[Duvie]

The joke ofcourse is the 128mb of ram...any winxp or win2k will saturate that quickly and if they load it with the common bloatware you will have no available resources after startup!!!!

I have an amd system that I purposely keep the startup selective and running older win98 FE and it still uses up about 70mb of ram out of the gate...open up autcadd and it will all be gone and start to decrease in performance with caching on the harddrive....I use 512mb and after startup and opening of autocadd 2002/ LDD version 3 it will take up equivalent to about 256mb ram...

 

[Yeti101]

All the top compu companies sell their comps that way..... 2.53 Ghz with A WOPPING 128 megs of RAM , computer illiterate people only know Mhz/Ghz... I hear people say that kind of stuff all the time (I just got a Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz!", WOW, THAT MUST BE FAST!"), they see 2.53 Ghz.... and a nice cheap price, sucks 'em right in.