Hello, need some pointers on intel, thx

[Brute]

Hi, OK, i am getting a bran new tower right away here. Now i am getting the best. meaning an intel 3 ghz Canterwood and 1 GB of OCZ RD RAM. already have an exos liquid water cooling system. i am having a hard time finding a good mainboard. most mainboards for intels and rd ram only have 4x AGP etc.

Now i need an RD Ram mainboard that has all the goodies of say the nforce2 asus mobo.

any one know of the king motherboard that takes RD Ram, intel 3 gig and a radeon 9800 256 mb.

thanks

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by brute on 05/14/03 05:14 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Quetzacoatl]

Ok...few tips here for you.

The radeon 9800 256mb has been proven to perform <i>worse</i> than the plain vanilla 9800 pro 128mb.

Secondly, DC Ddr and overclocked single channel Ddr on the Pentium4 has already shown it can far exceed what Rdram can do, even in an overclocked state. The only two chipsets supporting Rdr at the moment are the mainstream i850e and Sis 658, which are good, but expensive.

meaning an intel 3 ghz Canterwood

get your terminology right before you use it. Canterwood is the name for the i875 series of chipsets, not anything directly related to the actual pentium4 processor. If you meant Canterwood/i875, then you aren't even going to use Rdram, you're using dual channel Ddr.

At the moment, there have been some good and bad experiences using the earlier i875p boards. It is [bold]likely[/bold] better to wait a short while until newer revisions of motherboards come out. Until then, if I were buying an overclocking Pentium4 system, i'd get a high end i845pe board such as the Abit Bh7 or a Granitebay board, like the MSI Gnb Max. 8x agp is useless, it has no real gains over 4x agp. Even future cards will likely be unable to utilize the bandwidth without first seriously optimizing agp 4x perf.



Instead of Rdram, why not just merge 4 Sdram channels...

 

[Prof133]

* For a canterwood chipset motherboard, get DDR memory instead of RDRAM. I recommend two sticks of Corsair XMS 512MB PC3500 CAS2 memory. Two sticks in order to take advantage of the Dual-Channel DDR feature of Canterwood. And the 3GHz Intel Pentium4 with 800MHz FSB.

* Canterwood has 8X AGP.

* I haven't seen any canterwood board that can match the Audio quality of an nForce2 board equipped with the nVidia APU. But, I would imagine that the Chaintech 9CJS Zenith motherboard (<A HREF="http://www.microstorm.com/hardware/partinfo-id-505706.html" target="_new">Looks like it's sold here</A>) has great audio because it uses VIA Envy24PT 7.1 Channel Audio. However, I don't know much about this VIA solution so I would probably go with another motherboard manuf. and get a sound card: Audigy2 or M-Audio.

* There are some canterwood motherboard reviews in <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=541047#541047" target="_new">this thread</A>.

* If planning to get the non-pro version of 9800, I would echo the previous response. Get the Pro Version. In any case, this looks to be an impressive system.

 

[Brute]

Ok this is the story of why RD ram. Now first things first. I play an older game called Delta Force, which is Strictly software mode and Only CPU dependent. It doesn't use any hardware acceleration whats so ever. Now, my dad has an Intel P4 1.8 GHZ with 128 mb RD ram. My buddy has an Athlon XP2200 with 512 MB DDR ram and ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. My dads Intel 1.8 GHZ kicked the living [-peep-] out of that Athlon 2200 for Delta Force. Almost twice the frame rate. Delta Force at 1024x768 runs about 20 fps on an Intel 1.8 GHz, on an XP2200 it runs about 13 - 15 fps (most people play this game in 256 colors at 800x600 = about 30 to 40 fps on 1000 mhz machine) So the thing is, I wouldn't imagin how this game runs on a 3 GHz Intel. The game has been designed over mmx technology which is why it runs considerably faster on intel cpu's.

Also the Intel 3 gig IS the fastest available desktop cpu, and has been for quite some time now regardless of what AMD enthusiasts think. I also seen how RD ram works, 128 MB is almost like 256. Sure feels like it in games anyway. So I thought imagin 1 GB?.. LoL.

Now Now, if any one can provide a few things to show me exactly what I should buy. Some one replied saying DDR is actually Faster then RD?? How? If you can reccomend a really good board and the right kind of ram I would apreciate it. Here is where I am getting my ram from.

https://www.ramstore.ca/showproduct.php?id=129

note that is a canadian price, and this brand of ram is supposed to be as GOOD as corsair.

Oh ya little off topic right now just incase any one knows. I play Battlefield 1942 on my Amd T-Bird 1.33 ghz, 512MB SD Ram and GeForce 4 TI-4200. The game runs like garbage. 32 player server.. LOL couldn't be bothered. Is this lack of Cpu power or becuase of the sdr ram bottleneck. or both... also if I minimize everything and play at 400x300 on Unreal 2, I get like 10 fps still, *wtf*. I think SDR ram is holding everything back eh? main reason why I am upgrading is for Doom ³ & Half-Life ². and a faster cpu for delta force (1998 Software Voxle powered game)

any help would be apreciated alot, hehe Thx.

Brute =SW=

 

[Brute]

>>>>I haven't seen any canterwood board that can match the Audio quality of an nForce2 board equipped with the nVidia APU<<<<<


I totally wouldn't worry about it.. The day an onboard audio chip beats an Audigy 2 Platinum.... probably be the same day the cows come home =)

 

[Brute]

The specs of this system are as follows, what I already have.

19" Flat Sony Trinitron CRT
Klipsch Pro Media 4.1
Cordless Elite Duo Logitech set up (tossed the mouse and got a limited black microsoft optical) perfect mouse for my hands and its also 40 inch's per second as the piece of [-peep-] mouse that comes with this awsome keyboard is no more then 5 inch per second. really nice using a mouse where you do a sharp 180 to blast some ones head and the mouse goes all nuts. =)
anyway back to the show.

Thermaltake Black Xaser with mid size window.

Exos External Liquid WaterCooling system

High Speed Telus DSL.

scanner, printer all that [-peep-].

Tower-----

3 GHZ Intel

DDR or RD ram, still deciding.. 1 GB,,, will be OCZ brand.

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (pisses me off no digital vibrance, that's one thing I will REALLLLY miss.)

120 GB WD 8 meg cache & 180 GB WD 8 meg Cache
total of 300 GB Space on 2 drives.

not sure which mobo yet.

Audigy 2 Platinum External

Plexwriter 48/24/48
16X Pioneer DVD Slot Style

and the rest is just simple things like TV Tuner etc.

 

[Prof133]

* There are two 3GHz+ Intel Pentium4 processors. The one with the 800Mhz FSB is the better one - the one I assume you're getting. There's no RDRAM motherboard that can support a 800MHz FSB processor. So, your decision has been made easy - RDRAM out of the picture. And the memory bandwidth provided by the Dual-Channel DDR architecture of Canterwood far exceeds all RDRAM solutions. In short, RDRAM based solutions have been replaced by the faster Dual-Channel DDR solutions.

* For recommendations,

Motherboard: At these early stages of Canterwood motherboards, it's difficult to pick a best motherboard but it seems that the folks here at THG are leaning towards the Abit Canterwood boards (IC7 and IC7-G) after reading the reviews and such. Just be aware that IC7 (not the -G version) does not have LAN so you would need a PCI LAN card (cost about $10-$15) if one is needed. The basic difference between IC7 and IC7-G is:
- IC7 has no LAN and IC7-G does (Gigabit LAN to be exact)
- IC7 has Serial ATA connectors but IC7-G has more Serial ATA connectors.

Memory: It appears that the said memory vendor does not sell the Corsair XMS PC3500 CAS2 memory that I recommended above. I'm not sure which Canada Hardware vendor is the best but NCIX has the said memory modules <A HREF="http://www.ncix.com/productdetail.php?sku=8786" target="_new">here</A>. Ramstore appears to only sell OCZ memory. OCZ has some fast memory but honestly I don't know if there are any compatibiltiy issues with some of their ram and certain canterwood motherboards. I would point you to a link to one of the OCZ solutions listed on the Ramstore website but I wouldn't want you to spend big money on some memory that results in a problem setup all on my account. Just be sure it is PC3200 or above and not RDRAM.

 

[Brute]

Ok! I am going to get a 3 GHZ 800 FSB chip. Now theres a few things I am really confused with as far as compatibility goes with ram. How does a P4 have an 800 mhz FSB when amds have 166...

166 = 333 DDR Ram correct?

so [-peep-] wouldnt that mean you would need 1600 mhz DDR Ram for a p4?

kinna like 533 FSB on a 3 ghz P4, = 1066 mhz RD Ram.

and Dual channel, you need 2 sticks of ram running together. thats how RD ram works. if i wanted to dual channel DDR Ram, you have to run them side by side at the same size i guess same as RD Ram, but do you need a certain kind of RD ram for this?

 

[slb132]

AMD Athlon chips have a dual pumped fsb, so therefore a 333MHz FSB is actually 166MHz. Intel P4 chips have a quad pumped fsb, so an 800MHz FSB is 200MHz. Get it? (166*2) (200*4) The newest XP has 400 MHz FSB which is 200MHz FSB dual pumped.

The RAM that you would be looking to get would be PC3200. PC3200 runs at 200MHz * 2 since it is DDR (Double Data Rate) So if we take out all the Double Data Rates and Dual Pump and Quad Pumping, we have PC3200 RAM running at 200MHz and your P4 running at 200MHz FSB, they would be running synchronously.

To run memory in dual channel you have to get two sticks of the same Megabytes. So you would need probably two sticks of 256MB PC3200. Check your motherboard specifications to see where you would put both RAM modules. It will say so in the documentation. As far as I know for RDRAM, it is kind of like the old SIMM memory where you have to have duplicates in order for it to run AT ALL. DDR RAM does not require you to, but the RAM will run much faster in dual channel.

 

[Brute]

Alright i see how it works

so say i buy PC3500.. thats no big deal right

as it would only run at 3200 speed anyway, just extra lee way for overclocking.. So for an Intel 3 GHZ chip 800 mhz fsb. i would need at least pc 3200 or more

i would buy pc 3500.

as intels run quad pumped as you say,,..
does that make it impossible to run dual channel, or does dual channel have nuthing to do with 2x or 4x fsb?

could i run dual channel pc 3500 on an intel 3 ghz chip with 800 mhz fsb

200x4 by dual channel

 

[slb132]

If you bought PC3500, all you would have to do is underclock the RAM to run synchronously with the Processor FSB. That is easily allowable in the BIOS, you would set the FSB and the RAM to run 1:1. If they run 1:1 and you want to overclock your processor, raising the FSB would automatically raise the RAM Speed.

Ex: 200MHz FSB: 200MHz RAM now raise the FSB
201MHz FSB: 201MHz RAM

When it comes to running in dual channel, forget about the Quad Pumped and Dual Pumped busses. Dual Channel is just how the memory is arranged in the DIMM Slots and has nothing to do with FSB. Always remember however that your system will run faster when the FSB and RAM Speeds are synchronous. For your last question, yes you can. The i875P chipset is made for Dual Channel DDR so yes you would be able to.

 

[Crashman]

Forget the dopes using "quad pumped" terminology. The P4 used Quad Data Rate, which means it transfers data 4 times per cycle. End of story. AMD uses Dual Data Rate, transfering 2 times per cycle. Neither involves "pumps".

Now, the CPU to chipset bus is 64-bits wide. The memory bus is 64-bits wide. But DDR400 (aka PC3200) is only have as fast as the QDR800 bus of the P4. Both run at 200MHz, but the CPU bus is 4x per cycle, while the memory is 2x per cycle. To make up the fact that the memory is only half as fast, the latest P4 chipsets use "dual channel" mode. This turns two 64-bit modules into an effective 128-bit module. RDRAM has been doing the same thing since the P4 was introduced.

You CAN'T BUY RDRAM that's fast enough to match the latest P4 bus. So you're stuck with PC3200 in Dual Channel mode. Or PC3500, etc., stock clocked at PC3200 speed.

There are a few Canterwood (875P) boards out there. You'll find the Asus P4C800 and Abit IC7-G as examples. MSI and Gigabyte also have great boards. Most are reviewed at Anandtech.com.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>