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Anyone already using SiS645 (or thinking of) for a new Pulsar system? If Asus are making the motherboard does that make it OK?

http://event.asus.com.tw/expo2001/product/mb_p4s333.htm

Don't mess up your perfectly awesome Intel system with an SIS chipset!

Wait for the INTEL i845-DDR capable chipset, which will appear in January. I would only use the SIS chipset on an AMD where there is hardly any good chipsets, but everyone knows Intel makes the best chipsets in the computer industry.

Get Intel Chipsets for Intel CPUs!

Thanks Subhuman
I thought you might say that
Can you ask them to hurry up.
They won't listen to me.

If you want to buy now, simply go i850+RDRAM with a solution like ASUS P4TE. That's what I did! It should also support Northwood, and 533mhz FSB when those CPUs arrive next year... At least that's the word on the street

Hey Sub!

Do you think that RDRAM is better than DDR (not considering the price difference)?

Good question marcusmagic and a difficult one to give a concrete answer, but I'll try my best:

RDRAM is more expensive, as the yields of production vs. SDRAM/DDR ram are lower, which means it costs a little more to make. Also RAMBUS the evil sue-happy company makes all builders pay a licensing royalty fees, which also adds a few bucks to the price.

RDRAM has a slightly higher latency than DDR ram. This is masked generally by the cache mechanism which is part of the architecture, so I haven't noticed any tasks in which this makes a difference yet.

The main advantages of RDRAM are the incredible memory bandwidth, and the serial interface. The way the P4 architecture is designed is with a much longer pipeline which will of course allow it to scale to insane GHz speeds. It's only <i>just</i> starting to flex it's full muscle at around the 1.8Ghz mark, higher clocked CPUs will really start to show the advantages of the P4 architecture. The serial interface (vs. the parallel interface, which involves insanely more traces to address the same amount of memory) is important, as you reach higher and higher clock speeds, because it involves less traces (trace=path printed on the circuit board (PCB)) to the now-HUGE amounts of available ram. This means that at higher clock speeds and ram amounts, it is easier to get a stable feed of data to/from the RAM (because less traces means less memory timing issues to get a stable system).

DDR memory has lower latency than RDRAM (but again, this isn't as important with a good caching mechanism), and when used in a "dual channel" configuration, you get very similar performance.

The long and short of it is, they should both perform very well with DDR being the cheaper solution, and RDRAM will become more of a niche product for 'high end workstations and servers' as time goes on-- unless RAMBUS the company opens up the licensing a bit -- or for some reason the amount of traces required by DDR make it unfeasible for higher clock speeds.



I guess I'll sign this point...


_________________
<a href=http://infinitevortex.com>Infinite Vortex Audio</a>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: subhuman on 2001-11-29 16:51 ]</font>

Oops sort of forgot one point, memory bandwidth is important to the P4 because of the longer pipeline. It really needs a lot of memory bandwidth to flex it's muscle! This is why the SDRAM solution was so shortlived on the Infinite Vortex website, and at this point I'm definitely pushing people towards the P4 system (with a lower clocked CPU if price is a concern), the i845+SDRAM is solid, reliable, mature, stable, and compatible (as with all Intel Chipsets it seems, except maybe i820+MTH+SDRAM even if i820+RDRAM was fine), making it a good transition solution.

Okay time for dinner!

Thanks alot sub, and where did you get this 'marcusmagic'? From Pocus? Like Hocus Pocus?

On 2001-11-29 08:48, subhuman wrote:
If you want to buy now, simply go i850+RDRAM with a solution like ASUS P4TE. That's what I did! It should also support Northwood, and 533mhz FSB when those CPUs arrive next year... At least that's the word on the street

how that...? i can´t believe the p4te is already fsb533 compliant... is it? i think intel will make that tehama-e especially for the b-northwood...?

Mo

Why do I always have to prove everything I say?

Anyway, my 'farewell' post for you, Mo. I hope to not see 'native' on a ton of posts in this forum as I really think 'native vs. cpu' is a meaningless debate, the obvious answer is BOTH.

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1444.8/

well,duh............

well you won´t get rid of me that quick, sub...

nice article on hardwareanalysis.com... so the p4te is a really good choice. thank you sub.

but what do you say about "native vs. cpu"...? never said something like that... (btw, wouldn´t it mean "native vs dsp"?)
however i still use a dsp along my cpu - the dsp in the multiface, which enables me all the cool dsp properties i used with pulsar...

have fun,
Mo

p.s. any interesting news on your native workstations...?