Help
How much faster is a DDR motherboard compared to one that uses SDRAM?
Page 1 of 1
How much faster is a DDR motherboard?
#2
Dirty Harry 
- addict
- Group: Members
- Posts: 437
- Joined: 28-May 00
Posted 09 October 2001 - 05:09 PM
I guess its difficult to put a precise figure on it, but on several crediable sites I've seen a figure of 10-15% mentioned. Also, if you look at SiSofts reference benchmarks that seems to be about right.
H.
H.
#4
Brian Frank
- Carpal Tunnel
- Group: Members
- Posts: 3088
- Joined: 21-January 01
Posted 09 October 2001 - 11:08 PM
Then why upgrade at all unless your new rig is at least twice the speed of the old one? DDR is worthless? I'll argue that one: DDR vs. SDR in video cards, raise the resolution and color depth and watch the DDR cards generally stomp the SDR ones.
A video card can do a lot, true, but DDR does help to prolong your system's useful life. So you can't tell the improvement in current games, big deal! It won't hurt for future games now will it. If I was buying a new board now, I'd definitely be looking at DDR ones.
Also, if you've got an older system, you may not see any improvement if the system doesn't have enough muscle to make use of that new card.
A video card can do a lot, true, but DDR does help to prolong your system's useful life. So you can't tell the improvement in current games, big deal! It won't hurt for future games now will it. If I was buying a new board now, I'd definitely be looking at DDR ones.
Also, if you've got an older system, you may not see any improvement if the system doesn't have enough muscle to make use of that new card.
#5
Dirty Harry
- addict
- Group: Members
- Posts: 437
- Joined: 28-May 00
Posted 10 October 2001 - 12:03 AM
Well, some of us have this genetical defect that causes sleepless nights if there is something faster out there. To various degrees obviously. Some tinker with vintage cars, some with PC:s...
Agreed, a faster video card is propably the best upgrade for a lot of ppl.
Anyhow, I'm not saying keep your CPU and upgrade just to get DDR(this thread wasn't really about upgrading at all). But if you need to upgrade the mobo and the CPU, you might as well throw in some DDR and get the added bandwidth. And I hear there are people building a new computer from scratch- why not go for DDR ?
I agree with Brians basic principle, my last upgrade was from a Athlon 800 on a Abit KA7-100 to an Athlon 1400@1600 on a Abit KG7 with DDR. And it is twice as fast. Maybe I'll sleep well for a few more weeks, if it wasn't for the fact that I really, really wonder what that Geforce 3 Titanium would benchmark at...
H.
Lian-Li 60 USB with Enermax EG365P 350W Power supply
KG7-Raid MoBo
Athlon 1400/266 (cooled by a Swiftech MC462-A)
256 MB Mushkin Hi Perf. 2100 DDR CAS2-2-2-2 (one stick)
IBM 45,0 GB (75 GXP -DTLA 307045) 7200 rpm ATA100
IBM 27,3 GB (34 GXP -DPTA 372730) 7200 rpm ATA66
Asus V-7700 AGP (Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS), 32 MB DDR SGRAM
Advansys SCSI Controller
SCSI Iomega Jaz drive
Hauppage Win/TV Theater (model 498) PCI
Asus 50x CD-R
Ricoh 7040A CD-RW (firmware upgraded to a 7060A)
Soundblaster Live! 1024
Cambridge Soundworks speakers
3COM Dynalink 3C905C-TX-M Network Card
Philips 21' Monitor 21B582BH
HP Laserjet 6L
HP Deskjet 970 Cxi
Canon D660U Scanner
Logitech Trackman Marble FX
MS Intellimouse Optical USB
MS Natural Keyboard Pro
Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL router BEFSR41
Motorola Cable Modem (12/00)
Local LAN (three PC's)
Windows 2000
[size=9]
Agreed, a faster video card is propably the best upgrade for a lot of ppl.
Anyhow, I'm not saying keep your CPU and upgrade just to get DDR(this thread wasn't really about upgrading at all). But if you need to upgrade the mobo and the CPU, you might as well throw in some DDR and get the added bandwidth. And I hear there are people building a new computer from scratch- why not go for DDR ?
I agree with Brians basic principle, my last upgrade was from a Athlon 800 on a Abit KA7-100 to an Athlon 1400@1600 on a Abit KG7 with DDR. And it is twice as fast. Maybe I'll sleep well for a few more weeks, if it wasn't for the fact that I really, really wonder what that Geforce 3 Titanium would benchmark at...
H.
Lian-Li 60 USB with Enermax EG365P 350W Power supply
KG7-Raid MoBo
Athlon 1400/266 (cooled by a Swiftech MC462-A)
256 MB Mushkin Hi Perf. 2100 DDR CAS2-2-2-2 (one stick)
IBM 45,0 GB (75 GXP -DTLA 307045) 7200 rpm ATA100
IBM 27,3 GB (34 GXP -DPTA 372730) 7200 rpm ATA66
Asus V-7700 AGP (Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS), 32 MB DDR SGRAM
Advansys SCSI Controller
SCSI Iomega Jaz drive
Hauppage Win/TV Theater (model 498) PCI
Asus 50x CD-R
Ricoh 7040A CD-RW (firmware upgraded to a 7060A)
Soundblaster Live! 1024
Cambridge Soundworks speakers
3COM Dynalink 3C905C-TX-M Network Card
Philips 21' Monitor 21B582BH
HP Laserjet 6L
HP Deskjet 970 Cxi
Canon D660U Scanner
Logitech Trackman Marble FX
MS Intellimouse Optical USB
MS Natural Keyboard Pro
Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL router BEFSR41
Motorola Cable Modem (12/00)
Local LAN (three PC's)
Windows 2000
[size=9]
#6
kgeissler
- enthusiast
- Group: Members
- Posts: 362
- Joined: 16-March 00
Posted 10 October 2001 - 12:24 AM
The reason I had asked is because I am upgrading.
I just bought 512MB of SDRAM about 3 weeks ago. I am now going to be upgrading my CPU/Motherboard. I am just wondering if I should eat the cost of the memory I just bought and get a DDR motherboard. Or get a SDRAM motherboard and save some money.
I want to get the Athlon XP now that it is out. But that is more money than the 1.4ghz Thunderbird I was going to get. Just not sure how to spend my money.
Just in case you are wondering, this is what I have now:
Abit KA7
Athlon 800 Slot A
640MB SDRAM
Geforce2 GTS 32MB
I just bought 512MB of SDRAM about 3 weeks ago. I am now going to be upgrading my CPU/Motherboard. I am just wondering if I should eat the cost of the memory I just bought and get a DDR motherboard. Or get a SDRAM motherboard and save some money.
I want to get the Athlon XP now that it is out. But that is more money than the 1.4ghz Thunderbird I was going to get. Just not sure how to spend my money.
Just in case you are wondering, this is what I have now:
Abit KA7
Athlon 800 Slot A
640MB SDRAM
Geforce2 GTS 32MB
#7
JP-
- old hand
- Group: Members
- Posts: 1015
- Joined: 29-June 01
Posted 10 October 2001 - 02:07 AM
DDR on video cards just happens to be probably the most worthwile use for it brian, the memory was the bottleneck on those cards (and i suppose still is) so anything that increases the memory bandwidth has to be good. With cpus its totally different, the athlon wasnt really designed with ddr specifically in mind so it doesnt give you a huge performance increase. On the other hand the p4 seems to need a big memory bandwidth to do anything worthwhile, thats why the 845 sucks so much 
And of course if your buying a new board you wouldnt really want an sdr 1 would you
I think preacher got it spot on there not much of a difference but its worth it over the sdr boards. And remember memory benchies arnt everything, you can see what the p4 gets in the sandra tests but the athlon can whooop it at a much lower clock speed in real life games, and with a much lower memory score.
And of course if your buying a new board you wouldnt really want an sdr 1 would you
I think preacher got it spot on there
not much of a difference but its worth it over the sdr boards. And remember memory benchies arnt everything, you can see what the p4 gets in the sandra tests but the athlon can whooop it at a much lower clock speed in real life games, and with a much lower memory score.
Share this topic:
Page 1 of 1