Which is the best P4 mobo for me?

[IgoByte]

<< How about the Soyo SY-P4S Dragon approx. $153 >>



Yea, is that Soyo any good? Soyo has recently been making very decent boards.

 

[IgoByte]

Also, why does the Soyo SY-P4I Fire Dragon cost $210 at newegg and what does "DDR Raid network" mean?

 

[hwstock]

<< One thing people forget is with that the Asus P4B266 offers some of the best memory bandwith out of all the i845d chipsets. With good memory and its 3:4 function you can hit very high memory speeds. Right now with crucial DDR im running the memory at 160FSB which according to sandra 2002 is equal to PC800 RDRAM speed. Most overclocked i845d boards will have memory benchmarks from the 2000/2000- 2200/2200(high overclock) range. I'm at 2500/2500 in sandra right now and the P4 really loves that extra bandwith. >>



Really? I'm curious how the P4/DDR combo will do on the real stream benchmark (a la McCalpin). Sandra has substantial variation between successive runs, and since we don't have the source, we don't know what it really does..

Care to give a try?

Here it is:

P4 stream

One run is enough the get a decent sample, but you can use the included batch file to get ten samples written to an output file.

 

[Link]

This system uses 8 bytes per DOUBLE PRECISION word.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Array size = 1000000, Offset = 0
Total memory required = 22.9 MB.
Each test is run 10 times, but only
the *best* time for each is used.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Your clock granularity/precision appears to be 1 microseconds.
Each test below will take on the order of 8944 microseconds.
(= 8944 clock ticks)
Increase the size of the arrays if this shows that
you are not getting at least 20 clock ticks per test.
-------------------------------------------------------------
WARNING -- The above is only a rough guideline.
For best results, please be sure you know the
precision of your system timer.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Function Rate (MB/s) RMS time Min time Max time
Copy: 2137.7457 0.0076 0.0075 0.0081
Scale: 1982.7226 0.0082 0.0081 0.0088
Add: 1781.8695 0.0136 0.0135 0.0138
Triad: 1774.6357 0.0137 0.0135 0.0140
====The solution is validated!====


Above is the result of my setup. ASUS P4B266 w/ P4-1.6A @ 2114Mhz(16x132)

 

[DashK]

<< Where are the reviews??? I respect your opinion, but I would also like to see a printed review. As I recall Anand loved the Gigabyte and the MSI. Now the Gig appears to have problems. I would love to buy an Asus but I want a positive review of an I845 DDR board, not comments about how great an older I850 socket 423 board is. R. >>



Go to the [Hard Forums, everyone there is on a P4B266 pretty much and are getting crazy overclocks, no problems either.

 

[Athlon4all]

I think Anand's Mobo roundup speakes for pretty much everything in all these boards, except for Asus P4B266 which wasn't reviewed but I think the experiences speak for themselves.

<< Too bad about the gigabyte. It looks awesome, has USB 2, onboard ATA133 RAID, NIC and sound. It would be perfect.

Review nuff said

one more clincher

now by no means am i saying anything...but look at the dates and you decide

just stating the facts

hope this helps >>

Frankely, it was that 2nd thread that has me concerned about recommending the Gigabyte because IgoByte wants to oc. The first thread doesn't matter. SM just bought 8IRXP to test it out, and then resell it to get his money back.

<< Also, why does the Soyo SY-P4I Fire Dragon cost $210 at newegg and what does "DDR Raid network" mean? >>

It honesly didn't impress me too much in the review because of MSi's and Gigabyte's feature rich offerings, and seeing this price makes me shake my head. It's prolly a fine board, but considering MSi's ocs to the same speeds as P4B266, I wouldn't recommend it, especially at this price. I will note that it does feature Firewire, so if that matters to you then consider it.Oh and the "DDR Raid Network" was simply stating that it has DDR support, has RAID, and has On-Board LAN.

<< How about the Soyo SY-P4S Dragon approx. $153 >>

I have not seen a single review of it, but while it's just as feature rich as the Gigabyte, it prolly doesn't oc well because all the SiS 645 boards I've seen have oc'ed poorly (except for EPoX's SiS 645 solution) so I can't recommend a SiS 645 board to someone looking to oc.

 

[Tom]

Athlon4all,

Is there some basis for your opinion about overclocking with Sis645 motherboards?

My own experience, and virtually every review I've read, as well as the overclocking database at overclockers.com, and lots of user reports in the forums here and elsewhere, don't support your claim about poor overclocking.

 

[Athlon4all]

<< My own experience, and virtually every review I've read, as well as the overclocking database at overclockers.com, and lots of user reports in the forums here and elsewhere, don't support your claim about poor overclocking. >>

First off, what board are u using? I stand corrected. I did a search at overclcokers and they were getting great results, truthfully, I had read a couple reviews (Asus P4S333 at GamePC and MSi 645 Ultra at T-Break) and I was utterly unimpressed, so then I just made a note that 645 was not a good chipset for ocing, but apparantely those sites didn't do good reviews (or I misread them). Truthfully, I wish we would have a SiS 645 mobo roundup somewhere weather here at AT or somewhere else. But I stand corrected.:0

 

[hwstock]

<< -------------------------------------------------------------
Function Rate (MB/s) RMS time Min time Max time
Copy: 2137.7457 0.0076 0.0075 0.0081
Scale: 1982.7226 0.0082 0.0081 0.0088
Add: 1781.8695 0.0136 0.0135 0.0138
Triad: 1774.6357 0.0137 0.0135 0.0140
====The solution is validated!====

Above is the result of my setup. ASUS P4B266 w/ P4-1.6A @ 2114Mhz(16x132) >>



Here are results for 1.4 GHz P4 in Intel D850GB, with rdram @ 100 MHz x4 FSB (system is over 1 year old):
-------------------------------------------------------------
Function Rate (MB/s) RMS time Min time Max time
Copy: 2055.4440 0.0081 0.0078 0.0096
Scale: 2071.8843 0.0080 0.0077 0.0093
Add: 2081.1283 0.0117 0.0115 0.0119
Triad: 2092.3053 0.0116 0.0115 0.0117

Here are results for a 1.7 GHz P4 at 1.879, P4T-E with rdram at 110 x4 FSB (very modest -- will take 125 x4):
-------------------------------------------------------------
Function Rate (MB/s) RMS time Min time Max time
Copy: 2208.4778 0.0080 0.0072 0.0106
Scale: 2229.4957 0.0074 0.0072 0.0081
Add: 2286.7701 0.0109 0.0105 0.0116
Triad: 2253.2790 0.0113 0.0107 0.0133

 

[Blain]