newegg.com Pentium 4 2.4BGHz Northwood.. Anyone know the stepping?

[syf3r]

Has anyone bought one of these in the last few days, or do you know offhand what the stepping has been recently on this chip from newegg? Some of the recent reviews are stating SL6EF Costa Rica but no way to know if that chip from 10 days ago is the same one you'd get today, I guess... Just trying to get an idea of the best place to get a 2.4 from... It's been a little while since I've built a system.

Also, what's the difference between a 2.4A and B? Can someone point me at an explanation of the difference...? Would be appreciated...

/syf3r

 

[Technonut]

Your best bet for a guaranteed SL6EF 2.4B C1 is Here.

Also, what's the difference between a 2.4A and B? Can someone point me at an explanation of the difference...? Would be appreciated...

The (A) is the 400MHz FSB processor and the (B) is 533MHz FSB.

EDIT: From This AnandTech article:

The Pentium 4 debuted with the i850 chipset which only carried official support for a 100MHz clocked quad-pumped FSB. The "quad-pumped" nature of the bus indicated that data was transferred four times per clock, twice on the rising edge and twice on the falling edge. As you can expect, with a quad-pumped FSB there are very strict electrical guidelines that must be followed in order to ensure that the correct data gets transferred at the right time during every clock cycle. Although it's very easy to say "400MHz FSB," the amount of effort put into validation to make sure that the chipsets, motherboards and CPUs work with a quad-pumped bus is incredible.

There is This article also..

Sure enough, the 533MHz bus delivers a good chunk more bandwidth than the "old" 400MHz bus, especially with dual-channel RDRAM. Although the 400MHz bus theoretically was fast enough to accommodate 3.2GB/s, in practice, it was a bottleneck.

And Here

Until today, the Pentium 4 (without overclocking) ran on a 100-MHz bus, quad-pumped to 400 MHz. Data gets transferred four times during each clock cycle, twice on the upside and twice on the downside. DDR RAM moves data two times per clock cycle -- once on the upside, once on the down -- while your basic SDRAM moves data once on the upside. That's where the DDR performance advantage comes from -- and why the 533-MHz FSB is actually a quad-pumped 133-MHz FSB (yes, it should move data pretty fast).

 

[syf3r]

Thanks for the info technonut...
Is the SL6EF Costa Rica stepping really superior to the others, for someone who won't be doing any heavy overclocking? I'm still not entirely sure that I really "need" that particular stepping. Basically I'm just thinking out loud here, but if anyone wants to eavesdrop and make a suggestion, feel free. I'm going to build an HTPC on a 2.4GHz P4. I haven't settled on a motherboard yet, but have been looking at some Supermicro boards, the P4SAA in particular, on the intel E7205 chipset. I'm not planning to use any ATI video, so I don't think I would run into any of the bugs/conflicts with the ATI chipset and the 7205. Again, any suggestions would be good... I'm much less interested in overclocking than I am in stability, which is why I was going to go back to Supermicro. I've used many of their boards in the past and they're basically uncrashable, but if someone can recommend any other current boards w/ 533FSB I'm listening... Thanks for any help and/or ideas...

/syf3r

 

[EdipisReks]

Originally posted by: syf3r
Has anyone bought one of these in the last few days, or do you know offhand what the stepping has been recently on this chip from newegg? Some of the recent reviews are stating SL6EF Costa Rica but no way to know if that chip from 10 days ago is the same one you'd get today, I guess... Just trying to get an idea of the best place to get a 2.4 from... It's been a little while since I've built a system.

Also, what's the difference between a 2.4A and B? Can someone point me at an explanation of the difference...? Would be appreciated...

/syf3r

my 2.4b just came in today, and it was an SL6EF Costa Rica.

 

[Reliant]

This is a really dumb question, but the B just denotes the Northwood core with the 533Mhz FSB?

 

[SigmaOrionis]

I just received my 2.4b from newegg on 4-23-03 and it was a SL6EF.

 

[Budman]

Originally posted by: Reliant
This is a really dumb question, but the B just denotes the Northwood core with the 533Mhz FSB?

Yes that's it.


2.4A = 400fsb
2.4B = 533fsb
2.4C = 800fsb