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Question about Intel Processors

sitheris

sitheris

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 30, 2004
Messages
1,785
I have a file server that's running a 2.4ghz P4 Northwood socket 478. This is a machine I purchased in college from Gateway. It's a great rig, but with one problem - It uses RDRAM.

What I intend to do is get rid of RDRAM completely by replacing the mobo & memory.

My question is - Is memory type something specific to the motherboard or does the Northwood core itself require RDRAM?

Thanks!
 
sitheris said:
awesome. cheap upgrade to DDR here i come :)
Click to expand...

Yes sir, those northwoods are known for their OCing. Legendary. You want stable, I recommend an Abit AI7... damn thing's a hoss. Anything with an intel chipset will do ya fine for a server.
 
Fine by me, 816 votes at 5 star average can't possibly be wrong! It's got an intel chipset and it's a good brand... It was a toss up between that one and this abit. Abit or Asus I'll always own.
 
And while not critical, be sure you get pc3200, of any major brand. I think the northy is a 533 MHz FSB iirc, which is PC2700 iirc. I say get 3200 in case you want to upgrade to a pressHOT or something later, not to mention the prices are so close anyway. I say any major brands because memory problems are by far the WORST IMHO.

EDIT, and PC3200 will automatically underclock and run in sync with the FSB of the northy. And, if you ever get tired of it and want something different for your server, you can set the FSB of the northy up to 200mhz, and know for a fact that it's not your RAM holding you back ;)
 
mdameron said:
And while not critical, be sure you get pc3200, of any major brand. I think the northy is a 533 MHz FSB iirc, which is PC2700 iirc. I say get 3200 in case you want to upgrade to a pressHOT or something later, not to mention the prices are so close anyway. I say any major brands because memory problems are by far the WORST IMHO.

EDIT, and PC3200 will automatically underclock and run in sync with the FSB of the northy. And, if you ever get tired of it and want something different for your server, you can set the FSB of the northy up to 200mhz, and know for a fact that it's not your RAM holding you back ;)
Click to expand...


I was looking at PC3200 Value ram - Gigaram and Corsair 2x1gb, Gigaram is $165 and Corsair is $183. I'm leaning towards gigaram since it's cheaper and has better reviews.
 
$258.50 total for the Gigaram 2x1gb and the Asus Mobo.

Wow what a cheap upgrade...that's $50 less than it cost just for the video card in my main rig :)


Edit: Plus I think I could get about $200 on ebay for the RDRAM - 4x256mb and a little more for the Mobo
 
mdameron said:
And while not critical, be sure you get pc3200, of any major brand. I think the northy is a 533 MHz FSB iirc, which is PC2700 iirc. I say get 3200 in case you want to upgrade to a pressHOT or something later, not to mention the prices are so close anyway. I say any major brands because memory problems are by far the WORST IMHO.

EDIT, and PC3200 will automatically underclock and run in sync with the FSB of the northy. And, if you ever get tired of it and want something different for your server, you can set the FSB of the northy up to 200mhz, and know for a fact that it's not your RAM holding you back ;)
Click to expand...

The Northwoods are not limited to 533mhz fsb. I have a 2.4C and it's HT 800mhz. Runs off PC3200 or higher.
 
A fileserver for a home/small office situation needs 512MB max.

RDRAM rocked, I wish Intel had stuck with it, prices would have dropped...

If you are interested, I would be willing to trade you my P4 2.4 Northwood ASUS P4PE DDR 333 (PC2700) based system for your RDRAM based one (we both pay respective shipping). PM me if you are interested (what I can I say, I like odd tech).
 
lithium726 said:
yeah, and 533 northwoods need pc2100, not 2700.
Click to expand...


Wait so I need PC2100? 3200 won't work?


A fileserver for a home/small office situation needs 512MB max.

RDRAM rocked, I wish Intel had stuck with it, prices would have dropped...
Click to expand...

It's not just a fileserver...I also do database work and run VMware machines on it. RDRAM doesn't rock that much imo :p That whole system feels slow as molasses and it shouldn't. Not to mention RDRAM is very expensive to upgrade.
 
lithium726 said:
3200 will work, it just required 2100 at the least, not 2700 like he said.
Click to expand...

If you want to be technical, it only really requires Dual Channel PC-1600. If I remember correctly most of the Gateway 2.4GHz P4's are 400MHz FSB, not 533's. PC-1600 and RDRAM PC-800 have the same bandwidth of 1.6GB. These were i850 boards that shipped before the i850E that supported 533. But if this is an i850E, that uses the 40ns PC-1066 RAMBUS and not the PC-800 45ns stuff.

Donnie27
 
Donnie27 said:
If you want to be technical, it only really requires Dual Channel PC-1600. If I remember correctly most of the Gateway 2.4GHz P4's are 400MHz FSB, not 533's. PC-1600 and RDRAM PC-800 have the same bandwidth of 1.6GB. These were i850 boards that shipped before the i850E that supported 533. But if this is an i850E, that uses the 40ns PC-1066 RAMBUS and not the PC-800 45ns stuff.

Donnie27
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Too many numbers...ahhh! :p

The board I have is D850EMV2. CPU-Z Reports the Bus at 530.3mhz :) So I think I have one of the newer Gateway systems
 
Donnie27 said:
If you want to be technical, it only really requires Dual Channel PC-1600. If I remember correctly most of the Gateway 2.4GHz P4's are 400MHz FSB, not 533's. PC-1600 and RDRAM PC-800 have the same bandwidth of 1.6GB. These were i850 boards that shipped before the i850E that supported 533. But if this is an i850E, that uses the 40ns PC-1066 RAMBUS and not the PC-800 45ns stuff.

Donnie27
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i was going on the assumption that it was a "B" chip, to be technical.

i was right.
 
lithium726 said:
i was going on the assumption that it was a "B" chip, to be technical.

i was right.
Click to expand...


Still confused here... You guys are saying the board that uses PC-800 RDRAM (which is what mine uses), is only 400mhz bus? Why is my bus reported as 530mhz then?
 
no, he was just going on the assumption that you had a 400mhz FSB chip, which you dont. you have a 533 FSB chip.
 
sitheris said:
Too many numbers...ahhh! :p

The board I have is D850EMV2. CPU-Z Reports the Bus at 530.3mhz :) So I think I have one of the newer Gateway systems
Click to expand...

Yup, that's 533 and then that shouldn't be PC-800 RAMBUS, it should be RDRAM-1066. Now these boards can run 5:4 RAM to FSB ratio, that'd suck.

Donnie27
 
lithium726 said:
no, he was just going on the assumption that you had a 400mhz FSB chip, which you dont. you have a 533 FSB chip.
Click to expand...

I did say "most" and no I wasn't trying to be a smart ass. Starving for Bandwidth as it is, cheating this rig of Bandwidth is an even bigger Joke.

Donnie27
 
Donnie27 said:
Yup, that's 533 and then that shouldn't be PC-800 RAMBUS, it should be RDRAM-1066. Now these boards can run 5:4 RAM to FSB ratio, that'd suck.

Donnie27
Click to expand...


So basically I got shortchanged by Gateway when I bought this thing..I didn't know any better back then because I didn't know much about hardware.
 
lithium726 said:
yeah, and 533 northwoods need pc2100, not 2700.
Click to expand...

You know, 2.4GHz Northwoods may come with a 400FSB, a 533FSB or an 800FSB.

Intel's DDR chipsets can run memory asynchronously from the FSB (this refers to actual clockspeeds of both memory and FSB) - but such operation is officially limited to 33.3MHz above or below the actual FSB clockspeed. This means that with a 533FSB CPU (whose actual FSB clockspeed is 133MHz) on an i865PE-based mobo (which does not officially support PC1600 memory, and which requires at least PC2100 in order to run), you can use PC2100 or PC2700 memory. (A 400FSB CPU can only run with PC2100 memory; an 800FSB CPU can run with PC2700 or PC3200 memory.) If you use PC3200 memory with a 533FSB CPU, it's best to downclock the memory to 166MHz (which would give you PC2700 speed).
 
again, i was going on the assumption that he had a 533mhz chip. i know fully well about the 400mhz, 533mhz, and 800chips.
 
lithium726 said:
again, i was going on the assumption that he had a 533mhz chip. i know fully well about the 400mhz, 533mhz, and 800chips.
Click to expand...

Yes, and unlike AMD processors, Intel processors on Intel chipsets do gain some tangible performance with higher bandwidth. But the real-world performance improvement of dual-channel PC2700 DDR memory over dual-channel PC2100 memory with a 533FSB processor isn't exactly worth bragging about.

If on the other hand the processor is an 800FSB model, then PC2700 memory - even in dual-channel mode - will result in a somewhat noticeable real-world performance drop compared to PC3200 memory.

The above assumes equal amounts of memory (e.g. 1GB total of PC2100 vs. 1GB total of PC2700 vs. 1GB total of PC3200).
 
sitheris said:
So basically I got shortchanged by Gateway when I bought this thing..I didn't know any better back then because I didn't know much about hardware.
Click to expand...

In a word, Yes!

No biggie though, I've been playing with computers since 1983 and I'm still learning crap about them. Each time they upgrade, there are tons of changes everyone have to figure out. In the last 6 years we've went from SDRAM with two different speeds, RAMBUS 2 different ones, DDR from 1600 to DDR 800 and beyound, DDR 2 from 4200 and higher???? Why shouldn't folks be confused? Now we're getting ready to move to DDR3 and RAMBUS is trying to get back into the Picture.

Your FSB is about 4.2GB to match the Processor 533 Bus. PC-2100/1066 X 2 would work. The PC-800 RAM's bandwidth is still stuck at 3.2GB of bandwidth. This is more like 2.6 to 2.7GB when overhead is accounted for. Starving an already starved for bandwidth processor is not a good thing=P Gateway, HP and Dell havve been known to cut corners and this is a clear case of GW doing so.

Donnie27
 
Donnie27 said:
In a word, Yes!

No biggie though, I've been playing with computers since 1983 and I'm still learning crap about them. Each time they upgrade, there are tons of changes everyone have to figure out. In the last 6 years we've went from SDRAM with two different speeds, RAMBUS 2 different ones, DDR from 1600 to DDR 800 and beyound, DDR 2 from 4200 and higher???? Why shouldn't folks be confused? Now we're getting ready to move to DDR3 and RAMBUS is trying to get back into the Picture.

Your FSB is about 4.2GB to match the Processor 533 Bus. PC-2100/1066 X 2 would work. The PC-800 RAM's bandwidth is still stuck at 3.2GB of bandwidth. This is more like 2.6 to 2.7GB when overhead is accounted for. Starving an already starved for bandwidth processor is not a good thing=P Gateway, HP and Dell havve been known to cut corners and this is a clear case of GW doing so.

Donnie27
Click to expand...


Well thanks for the insight. I'm going to be using PC3200 for the sake of future upgrades
 
sitheris said:
Well thanks for the insight. I'm going to be using PC3200 for the sake of future upgrades
Click to expand...

With Intel already at DDR2 and moving to DDR3, then AMD moving to DDR2 or 3, just forget about future upgrades and get the best you can afford right now. If that's 3200, then fine.

Donnie27
 
Donnie27 said:
With Intel already at DDR2 and moving to DDR3, then AMD moving to DDR2 or 3, just forget about future upgrades and get the best you can afford right now. If that's 3200, then fine.

Donnie27
Click to expand...


Seems to be not much price difference in 2x1gb PC2700 and 2x1gb PC3200...
 
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