Intel P4 vs AMD

I'll have to look things over again. I was thinking it would still go dual as long as the modules matched. 1 card or 3 would automatically make it single. Duh, we know the 1... LOL

 

Page 2-13 of the ASUS user guide states that Dual-channel is available with A1-B1 and A2-B2 slots having matching memory. All four cards don't have to match, only the 2 corresponding slots. Thought I'd remembered that from somewhere. So, 2 matching, all 4 matching, or 2 matching sets deliver dual-channel operation.

 

Four sticks of 1GB will still be dual-channel.
The system will detect somewhat less than 4GB (due to ICH5R resource allocation).
Any 3 DIMMs will be single-channel mode.
4GB memory! Man that's a lot eh?
Should work okay though, with only an extra latency tick in penalty (no worries).

 

LOL Mine posted first and I even stated the source. Thanks for the backup there The_OGS. I thought I remembered that from before, but I remembered the guide having it spelled out.

 

Sophocles,

It should run dual channel with all 4 slots populated. I have 4x512 and it runs in dual channel mode. I, like Brobear can blow away a lot of off the shelf single cores. This machine was built to learn so I could apply that knowlege to a Dual-Core AMD build. It came about more by circumstance than design. Seeing what a dog the Dell 3000 was convinced me to do a little better. Having someone to sell the Dell to while keeping the 3.0 and not losing any money in the process helped too. I bought it very cheap as it was for the 3000 computer only. No monitor, keyboard or mouse. I paid $265 for it brand new and sold it for $300. The guy I sold it to was graduating from a P3/733 so he's happy and I moved on to this one so I'm happy. I got my $300 and invested in my P4P800SE MB. I got the 3.0 in a combo deal at Frys for $187. Mobo was doa (ECS Crap) as was it's replacement so they credited me $46 and sent me a check. So the CPU cost $141 exactly 1 year ago which wasn't bad. The MB was a walk in purchase for $100. the case was purchased prior to all of this from the Geeks for $58 w/480 watt PS. I had the hard drive and the video card so I don't think I did too badly. I can out-benchmark a 3.8 so all in all I'm pretty happy. It runs very well at 3.60. I didn't spend a lot of "real" money so if I wanted to sell it right now, I could even make some money. Not too shabby for a learning experience!

Happy Computering,

theonejrs

 

It had better or Asus owes us our money back. LOL Good buys on those parts, but you coulda hadda Northwood. Still can for that matter, only at this point the improvement probably wouldn't be worth the output in dollars.

 

Brobear,

Yeah, I coulda, shoulda wooda. Actually I was recently looking for a Northwood 3.4 but now there don't seem to be any to be found. That's one of the things about the net that drives me crazy. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Northwood 3.4s advertised in Google only to find out they don't have anything near that speed. Anyway, I've learned quite a lot since I joined this forum. Along the way I've met some really nice people and a few jackasses. Funny how those don't stick around for very long. They either get religion or take a powder.

My next build will be very different as I've done the necessary homework to be able to make better choices. First it will be an AMD. Second it will be Dual-Core. Either an Opteron 175 or 180. Maybe even an Athlon64x2 4400+. The MB will be an Asus. The memory will be Corsair XMS. Video will be ATi. Hard drives will be Maxtor SATA as the Raptors are just not worth the extra money to me. I do have some brand loyalties, but only because the products deserve it to begin with..

By the way, a word of caution about Computer Geeks. I ordered my new black case from them and FedEx claims to have delivered it 11:05 P.M. last night and informed me that no signature was required. This is something the Geeks don't tell you when you place your order. With the house lit up and the TV on they claimed they left it at my front door. terrific way to steal from people. Just keep it and say you delivered it. With no sig required you are completely at their mercy. Hell, they have my money but I don't have my case.

This is my third consecutive bad experience with www.geeks.com and when they get it straightened out, It will be my last. The last time I went into their store on a saturday for an all day sale, filled out an order form that showed everything I wanted to be in stock. When I got to the check-out some of the items were called go backs, or something like that "but you can have exactly the same thing for more money"! I call that "Bait and Switch"! To top it off, At the check-out I got some "Gothic" Bitch with way too much attitude who informed me that "well, I didn't have to buy it if I didn't like it"! Same thing the time before that when they screwed up my video card order, TWICE!!! Then promised to reimburse me for the shipping and then reneged on that. Buyer beware and exercise caution!!!

Happy Computering,

theonejrs

 

byron02, if your paying 170 bucks for the X850XT then i would say something is very wrong ,it retails for around 600 dollars

 

theonejrs ,iam going ADM Dual-Core also sometime soon, just need to hash out which one to get the FX-60 looks great but iam not sure its worth the bucks. keep me posted on what you end up with ,iam going to do a new motherboard and maybe another gig of ram too

 

theonejrs
http://www.starmicro.net/detail.aspx?ID=543 They still have the 3.4 Northwoods listed. They're in your part of the world, so check them out. That's where I got mine.

Got my new power supply today. Hooked it up and the first thing it did was kick back off. I'm getting to where I don't trust Antec. It's running now. I'll have to give it a burn in with some encoding for a real test. The voltage is staying closer to 12V than with the wimpy 170W I had in it temporarily.

 

aabbccdd
Newegg has the Sapphire X850 XT for $168 OEM and $179 Retail package.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102483&ATT=14-102-483&CMP=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r

The ATI Radeons are more along the lines of $300 or more. The AGP slots are more rare and I didn't see any good sales on those. Google tomshardware search and you can find a lot of good pricing on PC parts.

http://stores.tomshardware.com/sear...Radeon+&Search=Search&page_id=5&lo_p=0&hi_p=0

 

i knew i should of waited till the price dropped lol i payed over 500 bucks for mine at the time ,thats what happens when you get something the first week its out lol

 

Look at how long you've been able to enjoy having one of the best graphics cards.

 

Theonejrs,

I have purchased from geeks.com several times. I haven't been geeked yet
I just buy the odd cheap stuff sometimes. Their cheapo power supplies work good for next to nothing. Better than the PS from a cheap case when building a low cost unit.
I like the no sign delivery because I'm never home when they come anyway. Since I don't get any high dollar stuff it's no sweat.

Now for good parts I never go to Geeks. I hit reputable sights that might cost a few pennies more for peice of mind like newegg. I'm cheap, not stupid.

 

With the low cost of much faster processors from Intel and AMD I think the P4 is officially dead for new purchases.
$265 can get you a board and a processor that will blow a NW P4 3.4 away. It just doesn't make sense.
l8nights got a $200 proc/board deal and now runs a 920 dual core at 3.6 ghz. Not a bad deal. You can even get one that accepts normal DDR.

 

Speaking of vendors, I was starting to wonder about Ajump. They came through though and shipped a brand new power supply for the defective one. Being on the other side of the country, it took a week each way. It was worth a few bucks UPS to get a new one, otherwise I would have had to go the warranty route and gotten a repaired or refurbished PSU. I barely got it back under their 30 day RMA policy.

 

64026402
I wouldn't recommend anyone buying a single core to build, including any of the P4s or the AMDs. It just doesn't make sense anymore. The P4 I have started out as an upgrade for a Dell. It was supposed to be the CPU only going from 2.8 to 3.4GHz. Then things sort of proliferated and I bought the parts to build the current PC I'm using. Everything I've purchased, other than the mobo and graphics card can be used for a good dual core system. The 3.4 can go back in the Dell or I can build a cheap setup to use up the parts. All I need is a good gpu, mobo, and CPU and I'll be in tall cotton. I'm waiting to see what comes along later this year. The P4 I have will be sufficient till then.

 

theonejrs

I never said that your board didn't work in dual channel mode, in fact I never specified any board for that matter. I said that some boards don't work in dual channel mode when four 1 gig modules installed. Many boards that claim to handle 4 gigs won't even do that. The problem is even more common with socket 939 boards because of the on chip memory controller. I also stated that I wanted to look into it more but couldn't find the time.

 

Yikes - 4096MB of memory, sounds like an awful lot to me!
I still remember getting my ISA memory expansion card for my Epson 286. I had upgraded it from 512KB to 640KB, and was ready for the big-time - 8MB extended memory :^)
Harddisk caches are this size (or larger) today... LoL
@aabbccdd
Hey that's the X850XT Platinum Edition you have there, that thing is still expensive.
$489 (CDN) retail, w/ 256MB fancy GDDR3.
And it's still an excellent vidcard,
L8R

 

OGS , yeah i know but wonder how newegg can sell it for 170 bucks