ASUS Motherboard Advise Requested

[Don Mahony]

Well my ASUS P4T-E is now toast because I flashed the wrong bios. I got it
off the ASUS site but must have clicked the wrong one. In any case I have
to get a new board so am looking to upgrade at the same time. What my better
half does not know will not hurt her.


The problem is I have two sticks of 256MB Samsung 800-45/8 RAMBUS and two
sticks of 128 MB Infineon 800-40/4 ECC RAMBUS from the existing board and
cannot decide to use it in the new board or not. The P4T533 can only use two
sticks so my max memory would only be 512 MB but it has raid and some other
nice goodies whereas the P4T533-C looks like it could take all the memory
but does not have some of the other nice features.

My CPU is an Intel Pentium 4 1.5 GHz 400FSB socket 478 chip.

I like to be on the (b)leading edge so I would also consider scrapping the
whole thing and going with DDR memory in one of the 800 FSB motherboards.

Can someone tell me how my memory system using RAMBUS would compare with a
system using say 3200 DDR memory?

Thanks in advance,

Don

 

[Robert Hancock]

If you get a new board with dual-channel DDR400 (PC3200) memory, that will
give you 6.4 GB/sec of memory bandwidth, which should blow away the
dual-channel PC800 you have now with only 3.2 GB/sec of memory bandwidth..

 

[dgk]

Well my ASUS P4T-E is now toast because I flashed the wrong bios. I got it
off the ASUS site but must have clicked the wrong one. In any case I have
to get a new board so am looking to upgrade at the same time. What my better
half does not know will not hurt her.

I don't know much about the Intel MBs but can't you just replace the
bios? I think www.badflash.com does Award or AMI.

 

[KC]

The P4T533-C and the P4T533 take different kinds of RAMBUS. I believe it's
16bit vs 32bit, which means on the "C" board you have to install in pairs,
with the other you only need one module. Your memory would probably work in
the "C" board, which I have. It works well and is stable. I bought some
RAMBUS off Ebay for under 1/2 price of new stuff. Bought Kingston which is
guarenteed for life.

 

[Don Mahony]

How times have changed! When I got the board the RAMBUS was the cat's you
know what and now you say the DDR is faster. That is good to know and will
be taken into account.

I have been considering either the P4C800 or the P4P800 and cannot make a
decision. Does anyone have any experience with comparing these boards? Also
I read a review that said when the P4C800 is overclocked there is a bad
voltage variation so it was not recommended for overclocking. Again does
anyone have any comments/

Don

 

[Don Mahony]

I found out the hard way that the ASUS P4T-E does not have a removeable bios
chip.

Don

 

[Don Mahony]

Since I have the four sticks I would probably go with the C model but it
does not have some of the neat features of the regular board so it is a toss
up.

Don

 

[Barry Watzman]

The P4T533 uses a totally different type of memory than what you
currently have (it's still Rambus RDRAM, but it's 32-bits wide and 232
pin modules while yours are 184 pin), so you can't use your existing
memory with it at all.

The P4T533-C, which is a totally different board, CAN use your existing
memory but will be limited in speed because it really wants PC1066 speed
grade, while yours is PC800 speed grade.

RDRAM PC1066 as implemented in the Intel 850e chipset is still a faster
memory system than the dual channel 800 MHz DDR systems, but the boards
that support it won't support the 800 MHz FSB CPUs. So you gain on
memory bandwidth but lose on CPU FSB speed. Overally, if the CPU speed
is the same and both systems have Hyperthreading (say 3 GHz DDR vs. 3.06
GHz RDRAM), it's very close to a wash, with the 800MHz DDR system
perhaps averaging 2%-3% faster (as is always the case, the results vary
depending on what you are doing).

There's more to this than raw speed, the characteristics of the
motherboards are different in many regards. I personlly love the
P4T533, and I'm buying used ones whenever I get a good deal, $50 to $75
(you have to get one produced in October 2002 or later, some of the
early ones had a power supply problem). These later ones will also have
a fan on the chipset.

Understand that, as usual, whatever you do will soon be obsolete: Next
February or so, the "Prescott" CPU will be coming out and all of todays
stuff will be obsolete (there is still uncertainty as to which, if ANY,
current motherboards will support Prescott).

To throw a new monkey wrench into this, SiS and Asus, with the
cooperation and very heavy involvement of both Rambus and Samsung (Sis
has never had so much "help"), today introduced a new Rambus chipset and
motherboard using quad channel RDRAM of a new, faster PC1200 speed grade
(I believe that the chipset/motherboard is also backwards compatible
with the 32-bit 232-pin memory used by the P4T533, although performance
drops if you use the slower PC1066 speed grade, as one would expect).
According to early benchmarks, it beats an 800 MHz dual-channel DDR
system using an Intel 875 chipset by 3%-12% (without any overclocking).
The Asus motherboard model number of the new motherboard is the
P4S13G, and it's "feature loaded", both SATA and IDE Raid, for example.
I don't know if this will support the "Prescott" or not when it comes
out next year, I'd hope so, but Intel themselves has been waffling on
Prescott's requirements.

A conservative approach that would use your existing memory and get you
back up quickly but still give you an upgrade path would be a P4T533-C.
This is a very good board (it is the board that was used in the
Alienware "Area 51" systems), and you can get them on E-Bay fairly
easily in the $70 range (and sometimes as low as $50). But any major
upgrade will require new memory no matter what path you take, and
probably a new CPU since the P4T-E, and thus I'd assume your current
CPU, only supported a 100/400 MHz FSB, much less 133/533 or 200/800 MHz.
So you have some choices to make, and if your system is "down", you
are going to be under pressure to do something quickly, I'd assume.

 

[Barry Watzman]

The P4T533 uses a totally different type of memory than what you
currently have (it's still Rambus RDRAM, but it's 32-bits wide and 232
pin modules while yours are 184 pin), so you can't use your existing
memory with it at all.

The P4T533-C, which is a totally different board, CAN use your existing
memory but will be limited in speed because it really wants PC1066 speed
grade, while yours is PC800 speed grade.

RDRAM PC1066 as implemented in the Intel 850e chipset is still a faster
memory system than the dual channel 800 MHz DDR systems, but the boards
that support it won't support the 800 MHz FSB CPUs. So you gain on
memory bandwidth but lose on CPU FSB speed. Overally, if the CPU speed
is the same and both systems have Hyperthreading (say 3 GHz DDR vs. 3.06
GHz RDRAM), it's very close to a wash, with the 800MHz DDR system
perhaps averaging 2%-3% faster (as is always the case, the results vary
depending on what you are doing).

There's more to this than raw speed, the characteristics of the
motherboards are different in many regards. I personlly love the
P4T533, and I'm buying used ones whenever I get a good deal, $50 to $75
(you have to get one produced in October 2002 or later, some of the
early ones had a power supply problem). These later ones will also have
a fan on the chipset.

Understand that, as usual, whatever you do will soon be obsolete: Next
February or so, the "Prescott" CPU will be coming out and all of todays
stuff will be obsolete (there is still uncertainty as to which, if ANY,
current motherboards will support Prescott).

To throw a new monkey wrench into this, SiS and Asus, with the
cooperation and very heavy involvement of both Rambus and Samsung (Sis
has never had so much "help"), today introduced a new Rambus chipset and
motherboard using quad channel RDRAM of a new, faster PC1200 speed grade
(I believe that the chipset/motherboard is also backwards compatible
with the 32-bit 232-pin memory used by the P4T533, although performance
drops if you use the slower PC1066 speed grade, as one would expect).
According to early benchmarks, it beats an 800 MHz dual-channel DDR
system using an Intel 875 chipset by 3%-12% (without any overclocking).
The Asus motherboard model number of the new motherboard is the
P4S13G, and it's "feature loaded", both SATA and IDE Raid, for example.
I don't know if this will support the "Prescott" or not when it comes
out next year, I'd hope so, but Intel themselves has been waffling on
Prescott's requirements.

A conservative approach that would use your existing memory and get you
back up quickly but still give you an upgrade path would be a P4T533-C.
This is a very good board (it is the board that was used in the
Alienware "Area 51" systems), and you can get them on E-Bay fairly
easily in the $70 range (and sometimes as low as $50). But any major
upgrade will require new memory no matter what path you take, and
probably a new CPU since the P4T-E, and thus I'd assume your current
CPU, only supported a 100/400 MHz FSB, much less 133/533 or 200/800 MHz.
So you have some choices to make, and if your system is "down", you
are going to be under pressure to do something quickly, I'd assume.

 

[Barry Watzman]

The 3.2 GHz/sec bandwidth is per channel, and the P4T-E is dual channel.
The overall bandwidths of the two memory systems are the same, but the
P4T-E, which is a 2001 design, only supports a 100/400 MHz FSB with a
top CPU speed of only 2.6 GHz and no Hyperthreading. So a P4T-E system
is a lot slower, but the memory subsystem is the same speed.

 

[Robert Hancock]

PC800 RDRAM is only 1.6 GB/sec bandwidth per channel - it's an 800 MHz
effective clock speed with a 16-bit bus. PC3200 uses a 400 MHz effective
clock speed with a 64-bit bus for 3.2 GB/sec per channel.