Upgrading in August - Should I buy a 1.6a now?

[Chumster]

I've seen the articles RE: the discontinuing of the 1.6a chip, so I'm wondering if I should go ahead and purchase one now. Will there be any left in August? Should I just purchase the 1.8a? Thanks,


Chum

 

[RamIt]

Get what you can afford when you are ready. If the 1.6's are gone than get a 1.8 instead.

 

[Duvie]

If you want the high fsb I would get the 1.6 now....Likely in august the supply could be down...Newegg often runs out of stock of them so they definitely are going through a lot of them...

1.8's are nice if you have a board with 4:6 mltipliers and you don't plan much past 140fsb....I guess maybe if you are lucky you will get a 1.8 to do 150 fsb and couple that with a i845d mobo like epox you could run 400mhz ddr. However that is 2.7ghz and a lot of 1.6's wont do that with safe amount of voltage and temp readings...1.6's seem to do 150 in their sleep, and even 160 which is only 2.56ghz.


Remember all these chips are cut from the same wafers so they likely all bottom out near the same...Currently with say 1.75v or less that is 2.67....IMO!!!! That means a 1.6 doing 166 and a 1.8 doing 147fsb....

 

[snow patrol]

When's the next intel price cut scheduled, anyone?

 

[Chumster]

I'm shooting for a top speed of about 2.5 Ghz. As I understand it, a 1.6a at this speed offers more performance than it's 1.8a counterpart due to a higher FSP - correct?

Assuming the above is true, then I'll probably go ahead and grab one now and get the rest of the supplies in August.

Chum

 

[SupermanCK]

Yes...1.6A gives you better performance with the same clock speed...cause you would be running it at higher FSB...
and yes you should get it if you want to take advantages of 1.6A

 

[oldfart]

I agree with Duvie, SupermanCK. Ilike the 1.6A better. Gets you a higher bus and mem speed. It may not be a bad idea to grab one while the grabbin's good.

 

[Jwyatt]

You might wanna wait though. With the 1.6 being discontinued the prices on the others should come down some. Maybe you can pick up a 2.26b for 175ish. Those, from what ive read are doing well too.

 

[Duvie]

Good point....2.26ghz have the 17 multiplier so they can likely achive 150-160 range in fsb...However are they getting much more then what the 1.6's are getting anyways??? Are they hitting 3ghz??? If they limit to near same point there will be no savings since the 1.6 is 35 plus cheaper then that speculative 2.26ghz price of 175........

Edit: my 1.6a chip can run 2.26ghz at default of 1.5v anyways....So my chip could have been a 2.26ghz....

 

[Chumster]

First of all - thanks for the advice.

Secondly - damn you for the 2.26 suggestion.

I like the thought of OC'ing to 3GHz, but at the same time, I don't know how quickly the prices will drop. Even the theoretical price of $175 is a bit high for me. I suppose I'll wait a week or so to see if Intel plans on announcing any price drops. If they do, then I'll hold for now and look for the cheaper 2.26 down the road.

Chum

 

[Duvie]

I wouldn't wait too long...order from a good vendor like newegg while they seem to be selling 5/20 to 6/12 chips...

The 2.26ghz is still high right now and any intel price slash likely would be 30 percent max and I don't see that getting it to under 200 dollars...the 1.8 will fall to around 130-140 level and the 2.0ghz will take up the 180 slot so the 2.26 likely will be just at or still over 200.00 dollars.

Plus I need to add...I am not hearing any real yelling about these chips doing any better then current 1.6a's...I am not hearing ppl screaming 3ghz and since many of these 1.6's are getting 2.6-2.8 with 1.7v or less the extra cost doesn't make up for maybe a 100 more mhz....

My 1.6 can run 2.26 at default so it isn't saying much about the 2.26's...

 

[Egrimm]

Yeah, get a 1.6A while you can if you want to oc and get high fsb. Got one a couple of days ago and it runs 2.624 @ 1.7v though but with stock hsf and high case temps (39c, need more casefans). When another casefan and a Samsung pc2700 module arrive today (have a Kingston module now which I run 4:3) I hope to be able to push it further and get good memory scores. So if you want bang for the buck get a 1.6A, they oc like mad!

 

[marc1014]

i have 2 pentium 4's 2.26 ghz and they are both able to get to 2.9 ghz+
stable. i will be able to get to 3ghz when my new motherboard arrives, the voltages i use to get that are 1.65 and 1.60 and the temp is 41C idle and 46C or so full load. i think the 2.26 is a better deal but to each his own i guess.

 

[Chumster]

The price of the 2.26 is a bit for me to swallow at the moment so I think I'll be grabbing a 1.6a from newegg. Thanks for all of the input.

Chum

 

[render]

The price of the 2.26 is a bit for me to swallow at the moment so I think I'll be grabbing a 1.6a from newegg. Thanks for all of the input.

Yeah, go ahead. I got 1.6A from Newegg a week ago. It runs 2.4 at default voltage.(150FSB)

I think it can go 2.6+ with higher voltage.

Be sure to have quality PC2700 Ram. My Samsung PC2700 512MB has no problem at 375 with default of 2.5V

 

[apoppin]

Intel announced that they would be shrinking their PIV processors by about 10%.

Good article in O'cers.com about wait or not:

"Intel News"
Ed Stroligo - 6/28/02



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Intel Discontinues 1.6A Here's the announcement from Intel.

When Intel discontinues a processor, they usually give a future date for discontinuance of the product, then post the last date vendors can order these things.

This time, discontinuance is now, and Intel will only ship while supplies last.

So if you want one of these things, you'd better order it ASAP, simply because I'd bet dollars to doughnuts the price will rise on these quite shortly.

(Note: The Intel announcement has one misprint. The SL668, like all other Northwoods, is a B0 stepping, not a D0 stepping as stated in the announcement. Intel does make a lot of typos in these type documents.)

What Other Options Do I Have?

We've run into a bit of a problem in judging some of the alternatives.

When the low-speed Northwoods came out, people initially bought 1.6As and 1.8As. The 1.8As originally didn't do any better than the 1.6As, so people stopped buying the 1.8As. Then the 1.6As got better, but since the 1.8As had been bypassed, very few people bought current ones and reported them in the database.

So when you look at the database for the 1.8As, with just a few exceptions, you are looking at the results of "old" 1.8As, not newer ones. (The same holds true for the 2.0A.)

My suspicion is that recently made 1.8As will do just as well as recently made 1.6As in raw MHzage.

A Shrink Is Coming

About two months ago, Intel announced that they would be shrinking their PIV processors by about 10%. At that time, the announcement said that this would happen to the 2.53GHz in a few weeks, and for the 2.0A and up in a few months.

Well, we're supposed to be seeing these things in about four weeks, but sometimes in August is probably more like it. If I were going to buy a 2.0A or a 2.26, I would much rather have a post-shrunk one.

Intel Finally Announces A C-1 Stepping for a few PIVs Intel introduced the Northwood at a B0 stepping, and has not officially revised it yet.

Until now. Please note that this isn't an announcement for desktop PIV, just for a mobile PIV, but it's an indicator the "real" announcement is coming, and we'll see C-1 stepping PIVs sometime in October.

So if you want a PIV system, you basically have three options:

"I Have The Hots And Want It Real Soon" Buy a 1.6A NOW. Prices as I type are at about $138-140 with shipping.

"I Have The Hots, But That's Just The Weather. I Need Something For School" Hope the delivery of shrunken PIVs begin before school does.

"I Have To Give Santa Something To Do" This may be the wisest move of all. Not only will you get a C-1 stepping PIV, but dual DDR mobos should also be available by then.

We now can estimate how much of a boost dual DDR will give you based on how PC1066 RDRAM has been faring.

Going to dual DDR will be much like going from SDRAM to DDR. Figure about a 7-10% improvement using dual PC2100 over single PC2100 for those applications and games that like more broadband.

By Novemberish time, the PIV overclocking platform is likely to be a 2.26GHz running at over 166MHz FSB in a dual DDR board, which should improve the numbers a few more percentage points.

If you have or shortly will have a PIV system, you may not want to buy a new mobo for 7-10%, but if you are starting from scratch, this looks to be the "mature" PIV platform.

"But Hammer may be better" you might say. You may well be right, but I'm just telling you what you'll be comparing the initial Hammer machine to. If you want to wait until one way or the other you can judge the two side-by-side, that's probably the wisest move of all, but then we're probably talking February.

Ed

 

[Duvie]

Thanks for the reply, marc....

That is what we need is hear more reports on the p4b 2.26ghz...The lowest of the 133fsb's....1.65 to 2.9ghz is quite impressive eventhough the 2.26ghz has a 17x multiplier....

Maybe we need to start a thread to monitor the overclock being it is the next real good chip for the price versus the other p4b's the 2.4 and 2.533ghz....

 

[WangButter]

Definitely worth it to grab a 1.6a while they're still around. You can't lose... the damn things are dirt cheap -- about as much as a 512 stick of Sammy PC2700.