Want new MB and Ram, help

[nposce 0]

I have an Athlon 1ghz with 256 mb 133 ram. I'm looking to upgrade my system here soon, but i don't want to blow a huge wad of cash. I haven't read anything on the latest P4's and Athlon XP's except that XP's cost less. For my money, which chip should i go with. I mainly play games, some music editing, but other than that, nothing to extensive. If a P4 - What would be a good card, with DDR preferrebly, and same for A-XP. I'm looking in the 2 ghz range, anything above 1.8 is cool. And is RDRAM better for a P4 system than DDR.

 

I just preordered the Geforce 4 Ti4600 - freakin stoked, so if that will infulence what advice you can give me.

[NotSoSmart 0]

I just got a P4T-E with a 1.6a and 512 meg RDRAM and overclocked to 1920 and it runs great(could get more If I used the dip switch just being lazy using the bios) I build computers on the side and am building another one soon.

 

The system is rock solid stable. Using stock cooler and voltage.

 

 

Plan on geting the new MSI 845 Ultra-ARU (MS-6398) that uses the DDR ram cause they overclock better. People are getting 2.2 to 2.4 out of there P4 1.6a Northwood cpus just letting you know in case you want to save some $$ on the CPU. When overclocked this high the DDR is almost as fast as the RDRAM.

 

 

RDRAM is better than DDR ram for the P4 because of the higher bandwith. If overclocking isn't an option.

 

Good luck.

[Brian Frank 0]

For the Athlon XP: Asus A7V266-E, MSI K7T266 Pro2 RU, AOpen AK77Pro(A)/Plus(A).

For the P4: Asus P4T-E, Asus P4B266.

 

Don't discount RDRAM. Right now it's not as pricey as it used to be. Just make sure you get a P4 board with Socket 478.

[clutch 1]

RDRAM is *normally* better than DDR memory for the P4, but with the way the Northwoods (especially the 1.6As) overclock, they can keep up really well. I am using a SOYO Dragon P4S (SiS 645 chipset) and I have my 1.6 up to 2.11 using DDR266 (at stock speed) and it runs really well. However it probably wouldn't beat a similarly clocked P4 running RDRAM because of the greater bandwidth in the memory benchmarks as displayed here:

 

http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/cpus/intel/p416a/index.html

 

but I have seen others that overclocked them pretty hard and they can keep with the the RDRAM because of the increased memory-to-cpu bandwidth.

 

So, to review, if you go Intel *and* want to overclock, just get a low-end 1.6A Northwood and find a mobo that will let you tweak the hell out of it. If you do that, you can easily come under $400US for the upgrade (mine was around $350, but I had to get a new PSU for the extra 12v+ connector on the P4 mobo). If you *don't* want to overclock, and you still want to go 2GHz or more, then the Intel price issue may be of greater concern. But for me, I just like the stability of the Intel products (and so far, SiS's new chipset ) so it would be worth it.

[NotSoSmart 0]

Hey clutch if you wouldn't mind could you post your memory bandwidth scores from SIS Sandra that is if you use that proggie. I just don't trust some of these hardware sites sometimes. Seeing it from an actual real world user to me is worth a lot more.

 

 

Ram Int Buffered iSSE2 Bandwidth 2917 MB/s

Ram Float Buffered iSSE2 Bandwidth 2917 MB/s

 

4x 120MHz (480MHz data rate)

2x 480MHz (960MHz data rate)

 

I read about the new SIS chipset but I'm going with the MSI for the raid and USB 2.0 features.

 

TIA

[clutch 1]

I have been benchmarking my system at 2.13GHz, and so far it's on par with the HardOCP article I posted earlier. I will throw up some screen caps of these benchmarks plus some of 2.4GHz (assuming I can get to that ).

 

Also, what were those numbers that you have listed from? I get 1971 and 1996 respectively. These numbers are from using straight DDR266 settings, and not overclocking the memory at all. As for the other numbers, I don't know what they are (I am running at 4x133 vs 4x120, but I haven't found anything regarding the double on that last one).

 

I was thinking about the MSI 845 Ultra-ARU as well, but I wanted to see what the SiS chipset was like. So far, so good.

 

UPDATE: Running the benchmarks while the memory was in DDR333, I got 2516 for both RAM tests, just beating out the RDRAM benchmark. Now, this is just a single stick of Crucial 256MB speced for DDR266 operation. I'll post the images later tonight.

[NotSoSmart 0]

Click for benchmarks

 

 

I'm out of space in my home dir so this webshots will have to do for now.

 

Oh I did a fresh boot turned off background junk and ran the benchmarks one time.

 

P4 1.6a

512(2 256) Samsung

Asus P4T-E MB

[clutch 1]

Is that overclocked to some degree? The memory benchmarks just seemed pretty high.

[NotSoSmart 0]

Yes it is running 16x120=1920 That is what the first pic was for so you could see the overclock.

[sapiens74 0]

Asus P4B266 and a P4 1.8a wouldnt set you back too much, greatest board I ever owned

[clutch 1]

Quote:

Yes it is running 16x120=1920 That is what the first pic was for so you could see the overclock.

Oh, duh...

Here's my benchmarks using DDR-266 and DDR-333 modes.