P4 Mobo Quandry - Advice Sought

[Fionavar]

So the time is nigh - the boards are to be announced this Monday and then a new twist and even more time to wait arises - so it seems I need some help.

Which mobo should I go with - the new Intel 845PE with DDR 333 spec and apparently Abit will have an AGP 8x version . . . or do I wait. yet again, for the Granite Bay @ the end of October with the Dual DDR support - though only for DDR 226? I was thinking of throwing a Gig of RAM into the new Rig - but I am unsure what to do. AGP 8x is important as I want this new rig to have some legs, but the Dual DDR has me thinking to the horizon again. So - will there be a real world and perceivable difference between 1 Gig of DDR 333 or 1 Gig of Dual DDR 266? Thanks ahead of time. Peace.

 

[mechBgon]

What about RAMBUS? PC1066 does some amazing things for P4's. I asked some P4 users to copy the files from Unreal Tournament Disc 1 to their hard drives, then compress the folder using WinZip 8.1 at Maximum compression level. The time for a PC1066/2.53GHz system was about half that of a DDR/2.4GHz P4 system (which was slower than my 1.47GHz AthlonXP/DDR system). That's nearly a 100% increase in performance using PC1066 versus DDR. 1Gb of PC1066 looks like it will set you back about $700, however. Do you have an actual use for that much RAM?

Of course, if you want support for the 3.06GHz+ CPUs, then I don't know where you stand with the current PC1066 motherboards, which may not have the 70A power circuitry intended for those CPUs.

 

[Fionavar]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
What about RAMBUS? PC1066 does some amazing things for P4's. I asked some P4 users to copy the files from Unreal Tournament Disc 1 to their hard drives, then compress the folder using WinZip 8.1 at Maximum compression level. The time for a PC1066/2.53GHz system was about half that of a DDR/2.4GHz P4 system (which was slower than my 1.47GHz AthlonXP/DDR system). That's nearly a 100% increase in performance using PC1066 versus DDR. 1Gb of PC1066 looks like it will set you back about $700, however. Do you have an actual use for that much RAM?

Of course, if you want support for the 3.06GHz+ CPUs, then I don't know where you stand with the current PC1066 motherboards, which may not have the 70A power circuitry intended for those CPUs.

Yes the hyper threading capable is part of why I have waited so long. I was considering RAMBUS , but Intel is not leaving a lot of options open for that, and to be honest after the problems with the Radeon 9700 and non-Intel based AGP 8x specs, I am leaning toward only Intel approved chipsets. They may be a little slower, but they are more stable it seems. In addition, RAMBUS will only have one Intel chipset left with the new revisions - 850E I believe - hence my look @ Dual DDR. I was thinking P4 on a DDR 400 - but that spec seems somewhat off - hence my quandry. Order as of this Monday or wait until mid-late October for the new Granite Bay? SiS might have been an option, but again their lack luster release with AGP 8x has made me question that route - make sense? Since there seems no alternative at the moment - 845PE or the Granite Bay?

Addition: In regard to amount of RAM - I do a lot of photo editing and manipulation - so the more RAM in XP Pro the better

 

[mechBgon]

You may want to research the impact of Hyperthreading in your applications. It can actually decrease system performance in some situations, judging by Anand's tests with HT Xeons. Then again, you should be able to turn it off in the BIOS if it ends up being detrimental to your system.

That having been said, I would lean towards Granite Bay based on the extra memory bandwidth available to the CPU, or dual AthlonMP 2200+ on 760MPX, which would also get me a64-bit, 66MHz PCI bus for gigabit network and Ultra320 SCSI (just two U320 drives can saturate a conventional PCI bus by themselves on an ongoing basis). Granite Bay will save you some money by using the PC2100 instead of PC2700, too. If it would run registered ECC then you would have DIMM options up to at least 1Gb, so you could even get two 1Gb's to start and then have a pair of slots free for later. *shrug* Good luck with the decision!

 

[senior guy]

IMHO, your decision is stricly a matter of how long you can wait. First of all, I agree with your two alternatives, i845PE/GE vs i7205 (Granite Bay), but from what I heard at IDF, GB won't be out until the Nov-Dec time frame. Both chipsets support Intel's new HT (and from what I saw at IDF it's far better than their Xeon HT implementation). So, if you can wait another couple of months, I would go with GB and its greater bandwidth, otherwise, considering that the i845PE/GE is a more refined i845E/G (improved memory controller), it figures to be a fast, trouble-free chipset.

 

[Fionavar]

Originally posted by: senior guy
IMHO, your decision is stricly a matter of how long you can wait. First of all, I agree with your two alternatives, i845PE/GE vs i7205 (Granite Bay), but from what I heard at IDF, GB won't be out until the Nov-Dec time frame. Both chipsets support Intel's new HT (and from what I saw at IDF it's far better than their Xeon HT implementation). So, if you can wait another couple of months, I would go with GB and its greater bandwidth, otherwise, considering that the i845PE/GE is a more refined i845E/G (improved memory controller), it figures to be a fast, trouble-free chipset.

Agreed and therein lies my problem . . . the waiting game I have been waiting since mid-summer and I was going to go with the SiS 648, but it has seemed not to lived up to its potential. And now Granite Bay. According to xbit that should be October 27th for the release of Granite Bay mobos. So mid-November before an actual rig is sitting in my house Man I hate this hobby sometimes The thing is, it would be nice to see some actual numbers of performace increase. According to xbit the initial boards do not seem that great: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1026379832 - thoughts?

 

[senior guy]

That's based on an early engineering sample, so expect the production release to be somewhat better. But then again, why not just go for the ultra refined i845PE/GE and wait for Prescott.

 

[Fionavar]

Originally posted by: senior guy
That's based on an early engineering sample, so expect the production release to be somewhat better. But then again, why not just go for the ultra refined i845PE/GE and wait for Prescott.

Well that is a thought, but the reality is that I like to get 18-24 months out of a rig before upgrading. I can get this with the 2.4/2.5 upgrade the CPU with the final northy 3.2 when the prescotts come out and then count 18-24 months from then. This upgrade has a lot of long term legs I think and so getting the best performance would be great - if the dual ddr route makes sense. Or, as you have pointed out the PE instead. Again my quandry - wait a little longer or go with the PE. Sheesh

 

[oldfart]

What about RAMBUS? PC1066 does some amazing things for P4's. I asked some P4 users to copy the files from Unreal Tournament Disc 1 to their hard drives, then compress the folder using WinZip 8.1 at Maximum compression level. The time for a PC1066/2.53GHz system was about half that of a DDR/2.4GHz P4 system (which was slower than my 1.47GHz AthlonXP/DDR system). That's nearly a 100% increase in performance using PC1066 versus DDR. 1Gb of PC1066 looks like it will set you back about $700, however. Do you have an actual use for that much RAM?

That doesn't sound right. Was this a 2.4A GHz 400 FSB runninf DDR200? DDR266? 2.4B? DDR? I would expect somewhat higher speed, but not twice as fast. You can do better if you run higher DDR speeds.

I tried it on my system, which is a P4 @ 2.4 GHz, DDR400 cas2.5. It did the compression in ~ 3 min 50 sec. This was the entire contents of UT CD1, Winzip 8.1 max compression.

 

[mechBgon]

I found info that might be useful if you're still considering i845GE/PE:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1033916839

It has a rundown of features on some of the boards.

 

[Fionavar]

mechBgon,

Thanks. Someone has suggested an alternative to waiting for the Granite Bay and that is getting some of the new 350oXMX Corsair DDR to give me the bandwidth the Granite Bay would have now. What do you think of this idea? I have never played with RAM this way - out of spec is what I mean. System stability it a definite issue for me and I would be concerned in this regard - thoughts?

 

[mechBgon]

oldfart, I know it doesn't sound right, but that's what was reported... let me see if I can find the threads....

Ok, the original thread started out as a flame war, but if you go down to about the 80th post, I got WingnutPEZ and jbond04 to do the WinZip test: thread 1

And I also got jbond04 and Duvie to do some 3D rendering and animation benchmarks here: thread 2


Fionavar, I'll ask Duvie to give an opinion on your question, because he has done extensive experiments with RAM OC'ing on his P4.

Edit: I see WingnutPEZ has had a nickname change and is now Wingznut. I also remembered something from XBit Labs' report on the XMS3500:

Nevertheless, the company only validates one PC3500 module per system, because there may be some problems with such modules when working in pairs due to the shortcomings of memory controllers.

So you wouldn't get any guarantee of stability at those speeds with more than one module.

 

[Fionavar]

mechBgon,

Yeah I saw that too - after weighing all of the pros and cons it seems that waiting for the Granite Bay mobos is the smart thing to do. I get my AGP 8x - made with Intel's spec. I get the bandwidth performance that the P4 needs to excel - and ironically pay less for it with dual DDR 2100. So patience ends up being cheaper - I just need to convince myself that waiting longer is wise Does this logic make sense to others as well?