Woot. Intel Pentium 4 + DDR (MSI 845 Ultra) REVIEW POSTED!

[DN]

"One area where MSI gets extremely high marks is in its inclusion of a warning sticker across the AGP bus. Recent reports at several tech websites have detailed the problems that occur when a 3.3v AGP card is plugged into an i850 or i845 motherboard. These problems are nearly always destructive and have been known to cause the death of both the AGP card and the motherboard itself. Kudos to MSI for providing a warning label clearly across the port right up front."

Can someone elaborate on which AGP cards are 3.3v? I just want to make sure I understand exactly what they are talking about.. Thanks.

 

[Athlon4all]

<< Can someone elaborate on which AGP cards are 3.3v? I just want to make sure I understand exactly what they are talking about.. Thanks. >>

First go read Andy's FAQon the whole 845/850 AGP issue. And for the most part, Voodoo 3, 4, and 5's are all 3.3v cards, other than them I dunno, but Andy's FAQ should give enough info.

<< While the objections to RAMBUST's antics are understandable, when are people going to finally take the blinders off and fess up to the fact that for a typical system (256MB), the cost "penalty", if it can even be called that anymore, is down to ~ 2 to 3% of total system cost. Sure, you can be tricky and compare just the RAM costs and it looks like anywhere from a 25-50% cost penalty, but when you look at the sum totals for all components in the two (ie. RDRAM vs. non-RDRAM) systems, that extra $30-40 memory cost turns in to a coupla percent overall. >>

Midnight Rambler, You speak wise words! I couldn't agree more. The cost of RDRAM is greatly exaggerated, and really, the ONLY situation where you will see me say go P4+DDR is when it outperforms850+RDRAM. Right now, I would recommend ECS P4S5A+DDR333 for a P4 system because it's cheaper and performs better than 850+RDRAM.

Next year, 850 should become the platform of choice when 533fsb comes because PC2700 just will not be able to compete with 4.2GB/ps of fsb and mem bandy on PC1066+533fsb. Now, that is an interesting thing to keep an eye on though because DDR could take the lead next year when QBM starts to hit the streets at PC3200 and PC4200 speeds (200 and 266MHz QDR), so we'll see, right now P4S5A get's my pick, and we'll just see what happens. Really, unless RDRAM prices go up (they may, we'll see), just hand me the fastest platform for the P4 and I'd buy it, no matter weather it's RDRAM or DDR. You get my point?

 

[Bozo Galora]

while da link mon was "wooting", Soyo brought out a board that makes this one OBSOLETE INSTANTLY!

link1

$162 - NOW!

 

[MadRat]

The 845 isn't something I am interested in right now; the P4\NorthWood on 32-bit RD-RAM will cook it for breakfast.

Lets not forget that there are alot of DDR-based chipsets for the P4, too. SiS and VIA are both offering legitimate P4 chipsets, and cheaper. I see no reason that the VIA chipset would be inferior to the 845, can you?

I wonder if the joker at work was telling the truth that VIA will release a "quadruple-interleave" patch for PC1600 (200MHz) DDR-SDRAM to synchronize the P4's 400fsb. They already synchronize PC133 memory (of course only if the sticks are in pairs) for all of their P!!! and Athlon chipsets.

Imagine a "triple-interleave" patch to synchronize the P4's 400fsb. All three channels would equal 400MHz of true synchronous memory thoroughput, with the PC2100 (266MHz) DDR-SDRAM and its actual 133MHz each channel. When the P4 moves to a 533fsb they could use a "quadruple-interleave" again by synchronizing with four PC2100 (266MHz) DDR-SDRAM sticks.

Of course its all speculation. I doubt VIA thought ahead for this...

 

[thermite88]

http://www.viahardware.com/msi845ultra.shtm page disappears.

 

[Pabster]

MadRat wrote:

"I wonder if the joker at work was telling the truth that VIA will release a "quadruple-interleave" patch for PC1600 (200MHz) DDR-SDRAM to synchronize the P4's 400fsb. They already synchronize PC133 memory (of course only if the sticks are in pairs) for all of their P!!! and Athlon chipsets."

Yeah... I hear the 5-in-1 driver set (beta) is already in testing to "patch" a few issues they've found with that technology

 

[Athlon4all]

<< I wonder if the joker at work was telling the truth that VIA will release a "quadruple-interleave" patch for PC1600 (200MHz) DDR-SDRAM to synchronize the P4's 400fsb. They already synchronize PC133 memory (of course only if the sticks are in pairs) for all of their P!!! and Athlon chipsets. >>

He is confused, but he is in part right. VIA in P4X333 is going to support QBM (otherwise known as QDR) and it will double the bandwidth of DDR to you guessed it, Dual Channel PC800 speeds at first, but eventually it will reach Dual-Channel PC1066 bandy, and beyond. Go here for more info. This chipset because of it's bandwidth potential could be what beats 533fsb+32-Bit PC1066 next year. We'll see.