URGENT: What Should I Upgrade to? DDR vs. SDR!!!

[SushiKPop]

Greetings all!

I'm at the point of my computing where I have to upgrade again... (ugh), hopefully though... you will be able to help me decide what I should upgrade to. Mainly though, I want to know if I should buy a DDR system or an SDR system. I have heard that benchmarks are nearly equal for both kinds of systems. I want to get an AMD 1.33GHz CPU for sure but I'm not sure what motherboard I want. Please inform me of the pro's and con's of DDR vs. SDR and if possible, suggest specific hardware that I could buy to complete my new system (just motherboard and chipset).

Thanks all,
-John email: samcat99@hotmail.com

 

[Soccerman]

DDR SDRAM is around the same price as normal SDRAM now..

there are a few really good DDR SDRAM motherbaords out there currently, the Gigabyte GA7DXR, Epox 8K7A, and soon the Abit KG7 (or something like that). these all use the AMD 760 chipset (and the Via 686b southbridge I think).

The only Via KT266 based motherbaord that I know of that is apparently ok, is the MSI K7T266-R (I think it's -R).

do searches on those motherbaords on the forums, on anandtech webnews, and you'll find a fair amount of info..

 

[Hender]

I don't have specific recommendations for hardware as I haven't personally used any of the DDR boards out there, but I've heard good things about the EPoX 8K7A DDR board. I think I'll pick one of those up when the time comes this summer.

As for what to upgrade to, I definately say DDR. DDR is as cheap as PC133, and the performance benefits are worth it. You may not see much of a performance increase between PC133 and DDR now, but in the future you definately will (sorry, had to use the P4/Rambus argument there). And since it's the same price, why not? Crucial sells PC2100 for dirt cheap, and I think their free shipping deal is even still going on, so that saves you a bit more, too. I bought my DDR early thinking that the prices were going up again after being in the gutter for so long, and I took a bath when they dropped from $115 for 256 MB of PC2100 (when I bought it) to their current level of $66.

If you want specific benchmarks, Anandtech did a few good articles about DDR technology and the benhcmarks. I'm too tired to look for the URLs, but if you browse the reviews, you'll find them easily enough.

 

[ledzepp98]

"I'm at the point of my computing where I have to upgrade again... "

what exactly are you using now? personally, if you are building something new i would go ddr. here's kind of how i figure it:
pros:
ddr is the future, sdr isn't (this is the main pro)
some performance increase, it seems to scale better at higher cpu speeds
not too much of a $ increase

cons:
no clearly "best" chipset (this is the main con)
lack of platform maturity
only some performance increase


i'm going to stick with my system for a few more months and then go ddr. at this point i would get an amd760 chipset mobo, probably the epox 8k7a (the only thing i don't like is so far they only have 2 ddr ram slots) and a 1.2 or 1.33 ghz (266fsb) cpu, i'll see what speed/$ they are up to when i finally upgrade

 

[Darksamie]

If you were thinking that DDR would be much more expensive than SDR you are probably wrong...but the motherboard will cost more, but only $20 perhaps. So go for DDR! I don't have a DDR system but I can see clearly enough from the benchmarks that they are very nice indeed.

 

[arod]

Ive got an asus A7A, the one based on tha Ali chipset. People say its slower than the 760 but I havent been able to see much of a difference between the two. If a couple of frames is worth it.... go 760, mine also worked flawlessy out of the box, no VIA updates etc. Mine hasnt crashed once either which is a big plus.


Also, I couldnt get the MSI KT266 based board to work at all in the stability dept..