The Ugly
What happened here? Well, you've got to admit it. This one IS ugly indeed. What we see is again the P3C-L , but this time equipped with Asus' DIMM Riser II . This huge piece of plastic hosts Intel's beloved 'MTH'-chip, 'the memory translator hub'.
The DIMM-RiserII can be plugged into a RIMM-slot and then you can put PC100 SDRAM into the riser-card. It might look ugly, but it's the same thing as an onboard 'MTH'-chip. This way, you could possibly get the P3C, buy the Riser II and SDRAM, thus saving the money you would have wasted on RDRAM and once RDRAM has dropped in price, some time in 2246, you can take the RiserII off and plug in your new RDRAM.
We want to learn now, which platform is the best for a nice and shiny Pentium III 800 or Pentium III 866. Should it be the expensive i820-plus-RDRAM solution? Is it i820-plus-SDRAM, cheaper, but still good? Or might it be the outsider from Taiwan? An inexpensive motherboard with PC133 SDRAM? It's lean but powerful, two Asian virtues!
