A good P4 chipset?

[Palos 0]

Im planning on selling my VIA/Athlon setup and build me a P4 system.

I want to go for the P4 1.6 GHz Northwood, it can easily be taken to 2.2 GHz and stable. The problem now is the motherboard, I'm really in a dilema...what should I get? Based on i845D chipset or SiS645?

 

I don't need RAID or ATA133, just normal ATA100 and USB. USB 2.0 would be nice, sound or LAN onboard doesnt matter.

 

Any suggestions anyone?

[JP- 0]

Hi

Id go for the 845, you cant really go wrong with it

[BladeRunner 0]

Neither, wait about three weeks and get the 850E chipset.

However if ya must purchase now, go for an Intel chipset, you'll thank us for it in the end

[Palos 0]

The SiS645 supports DDR333 and it's cheaper than the i845.

I was looking at the MSI SIS 645 Ultra and it seems quite good. Certainly faster than any i845 board. Add on the fact that SiS is an official licensee of Intel, and u can count on good quality stuff

 

...I guess....

 

I was going to wait anyways, 14th April is a Intel price cut day, as well as May 26. What is the 850 going to bring? Rambus, no thanks.

 

Right now I have the choice between a MSI SIS 645 Ultra (107 €) or an Epox 4-BDA i845 (160 €). The Northwood @ 1.6 GHz seems to orbit around 212 €

[sapiens74 0]

go intel

[BladeRunner 0]

Aha!

I was under the impression you were looking to build the best possible P4 system, in which case you would have been wanting a Rambus solution.

The 850E is the 133Mhz FSB chipset, USB2, blah, blah, blah ready for the Northwood B CPU's and as with the previous P4 original and Northwood A setup's (using the 850 rather than 850E) it will offer the best performance.

But if your not, well, I'd still stick to an Intel chipset because it will work out of the box without you needing to do anything to it.

You wont need to go BIOS hunting, just plug in and off you go.

[Palos 0]

Can you argument that somehow? Did u hear of performance/stability issues?

[Palos 0]

Ok so u're saying that the EPOX (i845D) board should be ok? I'm asking because I didn't hear of any problems with SiS645 chipsets...there is of course a 60 € price difference that I am obviously taking into account, I don't have cash growing on trees.

 

Seems to me illogical that u guys are steering me away from a cheaper and faster chipset (the SiS645) That's why I would like to see some argumentation....

[clutch 1]

I have a SOYO P4S Dragon Ultra with that same SiS chipset, and it's great. It's the one that I run my Northwood 1.6a@2.4GHz on with no voltage adjustment and a stock HSF. However, the Intel chipsets (i845D and the upcoming 850E) are pretty cool too and as stable as ever. I just wanted to see how the SiS system would perform, and so far I haven't been disappointed.

[Four and Twenty 0]

go Intel

[Brian Frank 0]

I'm gonna have to say that SiS has come back with a serious wallop with the 745 chipset. i845D would be the only other one that I'd be looking at. [H]ardOCP just slapped up a P4 mobo round up, so you might wanna check that out since you plan on some overclocking.

[Hammer91 0]

Intel 850i chipset with Dual-channel RDRAM, and a Northwood is the only way to fly the Intel D850MV is a choice M/B.

[Palos 0]

P4 mates pretty well with the Rambus, DDR is kinda strangling the bandwidth. But its the price that turns me off

 

Dunno what to say...I'll wait a couple of weeks (days), maybe I'll see the light all of a sudden.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Quote:

But its the price that turns me off

See, thats where the Athlons come in ! And they're faster.

H.

[Palos 0]

Not much faster...

 

1. They are becoming a pain in the *** due to the crappy platforms they have to run on.

2. They run damn hot.

3. They eat power a crazy (if u got a Geforce, forget anything below 300W, make it 350 minimum if u got extra cards/case fans/bla bla)

 

 

OK! Seems like I made up my mind...it all depends on if I sell both 256 MB DDR PC2100 sticks, or just one. If i sell both then I'll go for the MSI 645 Ultra, and buy a 256 DDR333. If I sell just one stick, I can use the other in the MSI 845 UltraARU

 

Makes sense, doesn't it???

 

PS - Opinions other than "Yes, it does"...or "I fully agree" will be discarded...

[BladeRunner 0]

A RDRAM motherboard will cost you slightly more than a DDR based one, but not a major difference in price.

RDRAM is now actually the same price and if you look around, cheaper than DDR.

The RDRAM available now is mainly made by Samsung and all of it will run at PC1066 specifications without a problem.

[Hammer91 0]

Northwood=Athlon eater.....WAY more overclockable.

[Sampson 0]

Intel 845d DDR series: the Asus P4B266 and the Aopen AX4Bpro. The Asus gets a lot of recommendations. The Aopen's support is very good though their boards can be flakey.

 

Intel i850 Rambus series: Asus P4TE and Abit TH7II. Asus might not overclock as high but seems to be more stable.

 

Sis 645 series: Asus P4S333 and MSI645.

 

Somewhere in April/May Asus is coming out with a 850E Northwoods B (possibly) 533FSB 1066rdram board.

 

The Rambus series will overclock well and give higher memory bandwidth.

 

Your choice really just depends on what you want to use it for. If you're going to tweak it for everything it is worth and play with it that way get the Abit TH7II. If you want to overclock it and play video games with the least amount of hassle, the Asus boards DDR series or Rambus series seem to have good track records. If you're building it yourself and need tech support pronto Aopen at least answers their phones.

 

Some say Rambus is dead though a number of board makers are coming out with 1066 support. Rumor has it that even SIS is. Some claim that DDR will be an afterthought once DDRII arrives.

 

Good Luck.

[pimpin_228 0]

Yeah athlons run a little hotter but with the right hsf combo you can have a nice running system , like me i am runnin a volcano 7 hs and a delta 60mm 7000rpm fan cools mine good and it's a 1.33 and i have no stability issuses i fix all myine with a couple driver changes.

[Palos 0]

Ok, suppose I go for Rambus...can I still overclock the 1.6 Northwood to 2.x GHz by changing the FSB from 100 to 133? Cos I haven't seen any reviews of overclocked Rambus based boards...

 

Sometimes I wish I was in the States, over here in Europe everything seems to be so much more expensive...I can say that choosing the MSI 645 Ultra instead of a Rambus board will save me well over 100 € (80-90 US$).

 

I use my PC for gaming (online), surfing and a bit of graphics. Rambus will give me the edge for sure, but it also sucks everything out of my pocket I'll see how things go...

[BladeRunner 0]

Oh yes you'll be able to over-clock, no worries.

Here are a few links to sites where you could get any help you need overclocking RDRAM based systems:

 

I spit in the face of this site, but they do have some people who aren't 12 and seem to know what they are doing:

http://gamershq.madonion.com/

 

These guys are quite good too, good forum's and people who know their stuff, don't post links on these guys forum's to any on-line vendor, as the site is part of an online store:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/

 

For ASUS specific questions, here is good:

http://www.asusboards.com/

 

The ABit TH7-II seems the best board for overclocking with at the moment.

I've personally got the ASUS P4T-E for it's stability, also as I've got a classic S478 P4 then I don't have the option nor need for higher overclocking capability.

 

RDRAM is very happy being overclocked, as long as it's the Samsung stuff.

The majority of "no brand" RDRAM is actually Samsung as well.

At absolue worst, as you get into the higher overclocks you may need to drop your memory multiplyer down.

Standard is obviously 4x100 = 400 (dual channel 800), so 4x 133 = 533 (dual channel = 1066)

Dropping down to 3x (3x 133 = 400 (dual channel = 800) would be an option and result in no real loss of memory bandwidth.

 

As for prices, I can get:

2x 256MB PC800 RDRAM for £136.33inc vat (Just over £68inc vat per module).

[JP- 0]

Just go the ddr route if you want a guaranteed 133mhz bus. You might have to lower your ram to 3x if you do it on rambus

[Palos 0]

Ok thanks for the info...

 

How about the PSU? Will a 250W do, or do I need a 300W+?

[Sampson 0]

The weakest component of a PC is the power supply. In this area, never skimp. Given that you want to overclock the thing means that you will have to be cooling it big time. More fans. Sometimes lots more fans. Get a 400W to 450W power supply. After you start outfitting this thing with CD's, DVD's, multiple hard disks, a variety of cards, and fans (in the case, over the memory, on the video card, on the processor, etc.), you won't have to worry with with an undersized power supply.

[Alien 1]

Don't forget that if he wants to go the P4 route, he's gonna need a "P4-ready" PSU anyway [they have an extra power lead with a 4 pin square-ish plug], which is gonna be 300w or higher anyway.