Northwood + DDR 400.. WHEN??

[BDSM]

The first DDR 400 modules from Kingmax surfaced here in sweden today.

When will there be a chipset to take advantage of this extra mem performance? I don't want to overclock my buses so it would have to have the correct divisors etc..

Also.. is there going to be an athlon chipset that supports the correct divisors (/5 and /6 ) EVER?!?!?

Anyway.. the P4 should perform very well with DDR 400. Probably better than dual channel PC800 rambust, right?

 

[ahsia]

I would say that the current SiS645 motherboards can already take advantage of DDR400. My Gigabyte 8SRX has PCI/AGP dividers. Also, according to this guy on Asusboards, "Gigabyte has memory bus speeds. Depending on your FSB, you have up to eight different settings due to a special clock generator tied directly into the memory bus. This allows you to run your memory at even 200 MHz with the FSB at 100 MHz." Meaning you can overclock your memory to DDR400, or 200MHz already, if your memory can handle it.

 

[Athlon4all]

Actually now. Asus P4S533 is just now hitting the shelves on Pricewatch, and this board, using SiS 645DX, has a unoffical DDR400 overclock option. However, I would not recommend spending money on DDR 400. It is plagued by (for DDR) high latency, (higher than PC1066 RDRAM) and it at best, is >5% faster than DDR333. If you want the hottest memory technology, go pickup a Abit TH7II Mobo, get a Northwood that can hit 533fsb, and get Samsung PC800 RDRAM and oc to PC1066+533fsb. This setup will be faster than any DDR setup, including DDR400 on 533fsb.

 

[Grendel99]

I think the only Athlon board that has 1/5 and 1/6 dividers is the Iwill XP333-R. I have one and it's an awesome board You get some hella nice memory scores in Sandra and very high 3Dmark2001 scores from what I have seen. I'm sure real world performance would be noticeable to say the least.

 

[Bozo Galora]

link

 

[BDSM]

Athlon 4 all.. check out Bozo Galora's link. Very interesting!

DDR still has way lower latency than RDRAM. The TH7 seems like a nice board but I read somewhere that chances aren't that good that you will be able to run your rdram @ 1066 mhz STABLY. Ya might have to modify/replace some circuits on the board and I wouldn't want to do that.

It really stinks that AMD won't release a faster FSB athlon... 321 frames/sec in quake 3 on a 1600 mhz cpu!!!.. just imagine a t-bred @ 2 ghz at 200 mhz fsb!!

I am sure that at this high fsb it would also encode mp3 and divx very fast! It's a shame via can't release at least un official divisors on their chipsets.. Many hit 200+ fsb's on their kt333 and kt266 boards even.. Why is it so hard to fix a /5 /6 divisor?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is the Iwill XP333-R which has the correct divisors but I hear performance isn't very good compared to the VIA based boards.

I hope someone will release a good, stable chipset for the athlon that can handle 200 mhz fsb with the correct divisors.. Or I will have to go for a Northwood.


Update:

Check this link http://www.x86-secret.com/pics/ram/km400/newddr400.jpg

DDR400 CAS 2.. .. maybe we could eek out 350 fps in quake with a stick of that ram!!

 

[Athlon4all]

I will quickly point out that he tested PC800 on 400fsb. 533fsb PC1066 has been proven over and over to achieve swignificantley lower latency (see here. only compares to 845 with SDRAM but, still, you should get the point). Still though, I am not totally convinced. I really think that Anandtech or Tom's hardware should do a comparision of the newest memory technologies. Apparantely though I was wrong, To be honest, I distinctavely remember reading somewhere DDR400 having higher latency than DDR333. Further, I have proven myself even more wrong. Go to Accelenation, they use Cachememand clearly DDR400 does decrease latency. I stand corrected

I do however still maintain, that in real world benchmarks, DDR400 is really not worth the price premium over DDR333. If you look at the Accelenation article, look at those numbers:

In Sysmark 2K2 Office Productivitiy: DDR400 0.5% faster
ICC: DDR400 No faster than DDR333
Overall: 0.7% faster
Aquanox 640x480x32: 2% faster
Byrce 5: 2 seconds faster

So, really, DDR400 is really hardly any faster than DDR333, and if you go again to Ace's Hardware. That chart isn't exactley the easiest to read, but what you need to pay attention to are the numbers for the 2Ghz P4 512KB on SiS 645 with PC2700 DDR, and the numbers for the 2GHz P4 (that's right a Williamette) on 850 with PC1066 RDRAM. And you'll notice in many situations, the old Williametee beats Northwood on DDR. So, I do acknowledge that DDR400 isn't as bad performance wise as I originally made it out to be, but still, my point stands that PC1066+533fsb is the fastest for Northwood, and prices, it is hardly any more expensive than a PC2700 setup and I guarantee you that it will be cheaper than buying PC3200 DDR. So that's that.

 

[BDSM]

Athlon4all

Pc3200 has been out there for like a month, it costs 88 bucks for a 256 meg stick (checked procewatch). RDRAM has been out for much longer.. what is it.. one or two years? And it costs $60 for 256 meg.
The Cas 2 sticks will prolly be a few dollars more.. But this is NEW stuff.. the price will go down as with everything else in the computer bizniz. Compared to other memories that is. Noone knows what ram will cost tomorrow.

Here in sweden a Th7 II raid is TWICE as expensive as a Sis based mobo.. So.. that more than makes up for the price difference between RDRAM and pc3200.

When pc1066 RDRAM is released it may be the performance leader for just a bit.. but we know Intel is working on a dual channel DDR solution as well. They have a server chipset already that performs almost on par with the most expensive RDRAM chipset. And that is with pc1600 DDR! Pc3200 is exactly TWICE as fast as pc1600 with almost half the latency.

It's not probable that Intel will release a dual channel Pc3200 compatible chipset .. but dual channel pc2100 boards are probably not very far away, bearing in mind that Intel will soon release 133 mhz fsb processors.

And for overclockers.. I believe that a NW 1.6a 133 mhz fsb overclocked to 2.4 ghz coupled with good PC3200 Cas 2 ram would show some incredible mem performance due to fsb and mem being synchronous.. probably with very low latencies as well. Hopefully there will be a chipset for the p4 that supports /5 and /6 divisors... This could be a KILLER combo!!


And for the Athlon.. well there is no rdram compatible chipset for it and there will never be one!

If Via would just release a chipset with the correct divisors! (/5 and /6) it would KICK ASS!.. We've already seen that memory performance beats even dual channel RDRAM in throughput! And latencies are MUCH lower!

I refuse to believe it is difficult to implement these divisors.. We know even a kt266 board can run stably at over 200 mhz and with the correct divisors it would be so much easier to get a stable setup!

Can someone please tell me why, oh WHY Via won't give us these damned divisors?!?! Is it all politics or what???