intel 850 vs. granite bay

[newjack]

i was in the process of purchasing a ASUS P4T533 mobo when i read a thread stating that there is a board that uses a chipset called "granite bay" this board supposedly uses double rate ddr memory which is supposed to finally outperform the rd ram. can anyone confirm this info and if anyone familiar w/ this chipset could they give me some feed back as to whether than have had any problems w/ it? is the dual rate ddr ram readily available? if so is it expensive? lastly who makes these boards, i did a quick search on price watch but couldn't find one. thnx in advance, tom

 

[letdown]

A dual-DDR board like granite bay can just have two sticks of any old PC2100 DDR slapped into it. There's no "dual channel ram", per se, just a board that runs regular sticks in a dual-channel mode for a (2.1 x 2) = 4.2GB/s bandwith that equals RDRAM. These sticks are widely available and cheap, which the Granite Bay itself is not.

The current granite-bay chipsets are expensive, and most people seem to think it's better to wait for springdale, prescott, or the next Next Big Thing and not this one. The whole idea was to move away from expensive RDRAM, but now you're forced to spend $250 on the mobo and blow all those savings.

If you want a high-end upgrade NOW and want to do some mad OCing, then a GB seems like it might work. Keep in mind that it's first-generation technology and benchies haven't been all that great...

 

[newjack]

ok,thnx, i was leaning towards the intel 850 anyway for the same reasons u mentioned (new stuff to the market usually has a bug or two). i was going to go with the ASUS P4T533 or the P4T533 C. the only big difference seems to be the rdram they take. do u have any input as to which ram would be better rd 1066 or rd4200?