Hey guys/gals and all in between. Noobie looking for inputs. Everytime I decide it's time to put together a PC to replace my dinosaur, I tell myself I'm not going to spend much. Then I go to Newegg and create a wish list after reading reviews and forums and deciding that I need to go up a notch in this and that. Then my wish list gets more expensive. :x: Well, I'm at it again. I've started pricing mobo's and RAM and now there are the newer P4 mobo's LGA775's etc, with DDR2 @533mhz and then the RAM to go with it. My question is, is there really a great deal of difference between the DDR2 @ 533mhz over the DDR @ 400mhz? I haven't done a price comparison for the RAM of DDR and DDR2 if someone has input on that, but the Mobo's are more expensive and substantially more so than the 865 or 875 chipsets. Another question, keep in mind I not extremely knowledgeable on the stuff that has come out in the last year and been out of the loop. It was only recently that I found out PCI express is quicker theoretically than 8xAGP. I'm so used to turning my nose up at PCI video cards. The same goes for the newer P4 chipsets and DDR2 RAM. WIth that said, some mobo's have DDR and DDR2 slots. Can you run DDR and DDR 2 RAM at once? I'll be checking back often as I progress through this process and get ready to make a 1st build. Thanks for any help. Later, JP
if price is a factor, I would have you move away from intel. Even if it's a slight factor. Not even a factor really, i'm no AMD fan boy I just like stuff that works and works good. I very much doubt you being able to run ddr and ddr2 at the same time, for they are seperate speeds. PCI express is a new graphics port. Very much faster than AGP and is to be the new standard.
yea like there are ddr and ddr2 sharing mobos, but they only let you use one kind, until the motherboard chipset would be able to channel the type of memories for certain applications, kind of like a memory array similar to alienware's video array. pci express isn't much faster than agp 8x for NOW. in the near future when ati and nvidia release new video architectures, it'll fully use the new technology we started something, but we don't know how to use it yet, thats us americans.
DDR2 may eventually show it's benefits, but for right now it's more expensive and offers no benefits over regular DDR. Get a 915P-based motherboard if you're going to stick with an Intel platform. You can only run DDR or DDR2 at any given time, but not both. A DDR interface is 184-pins vs. the 240-pins with a DDR2 stick of RAM or the DDR2 slot. PCI Express (PCIe not PCI X) is a serial technology. The plain PCI bus (this includes PCI X) is parallel. Parallel here means 2 or more devices sharing, or at least needing the ability to share a bus. Serial is a point-to-point setup with a device getting it's own private lane. PCIe is based on the number of lanes coming from the chipset. An x16 PCIe slot has 16 lanes going to it; a x1 lane has one lane going to it. Each lane supports 1GB/s total, or 500MB/s up and down at the same time. For a midrange Intel system, I'd get an Asus or Gigabyte i915P motherboard supporting DDR. If you get an i925X/XE chipset board you have to get DDR2. The thing is the 915P and the 925X/XE don't really have any noticeable performance delta between them.
Thanks for the advice. You guys confirmed what I have been thinking. Go with a PCIe board with DDR RAM. :good: I was a little puzzled when I started coming across mobos with 2 DDR2 slots and 4 DDR slots. The DDR2 stuff is a little pricey too. I haven't decided yet on Intel or AMD. I've only been looking at Intel because I'm more familiar with their specs and models. AMD isn't as straight forward in the chip names as to how fast they really are. But I plan on learning more about them before making my decision. I don't plan on OC'ing so AMD has no advantage in my book and both P4 and AMD are on level footing in my mind. I know this may start a p!ssing contest but what are the recommendations and how have the 915 chipsets and P4 doing together? Also what combinations of AMD/chipsets are recommended. Thanks Ninjafetus for the advice on AMD. Should I even bother with a 64bit system right now? Finally where are some good resources on building a PC. I'm waiting on the income tax check before I begin. Later, Jody
Other sites I would highly recommend you look at: -Anandtech -PC Perspective -2CPU -Hexus -Hot Hardware -T-Break -Dan's Data -[H]ard|OCP Those are all websites I've found to have reliable information. Some will be more overclocking-heavy, but others will have a more professional angle to them. Most have a message board, like this one, that you can browse and what people like. As for the 64-bit CPU, that's a little more than a yes or no answer. At some point we will need to go to 64-bit. AMD decided to make a 64-bit CPU that also was able to run in 32-bit mode without emulation...in otherwords a CPU that was both 32-bit and 64-bit. Intel eventually followed suit. Even in 32-bit mode, the Athlon 64 comes back to cream the older Athlon XP. Part of the reason is that the memory controller is integrated onto the A64 CPU itself. To make a long story short, this reduces the latency (time taken to do something) in memory transfers. Also, AMD has been working on the principle of more work per clock cycle. This does make it harder to scale to the high speeds of the Pentium 4, but if you start looking at benchmarks, you can see that clock speed doesn't mean a whole lot. That's part of the reason behind the CPU rating system AMD is using. I'm not as up on the Intel side of things, but from the benchmarks I've seen, the 915 chipset is excellent. Right now, unless you have to have the latest and greatest Intel-based setup, the 915P is your friend. As a general rule, when building an Intel CPU-based system, make sure you're using a motherboard with an Intel chipset. For the AMD side of things, you'll probably want to look at a motherboard supporting a Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPU. It's going to be a little pricier than a Socket 754 system, but S754 is AMD's value socket, where it's Sempron (their answer to the Celeron) will go. Yes, there are Athlons out there for S754, but if you want an upgrade future, go with S939. As far as the CPU goes, the slowest S939 CPU you can get is the Athlon64 3000+. 1.8GHz may not seem like a massive amount of horsepower, but you need to remember that clock speed doesn't mean a whole lot these days. For the chipset to look at, you're going to find the nForce 4 Ultra to be the best bet and one of the most prevalent chipsets on the market. For the motherboards to look at, I've seen a few members here using Gigabyte K8NS-939. Gigabyte isn't really known for overclocking, but they tend to have some nice accessory packages. The other one that you might take a look at is the DFI LanParty/LanParty UT (the UT has less accessories than a plain LanParty). I've been very pleased with this board. It is designed for overclocking, but it's also a very solid board at stock speeds. The thir choice that comes to mind is the Chaintech VNF4, which also happens to be one of the cheapest NF4 Ultra motherboards on the market.
Thanks Big B. I will begin my AMD research and familiarize myself with their products. You know this morning I looked at a mobo on Newegg. The specs had 2 DDr slots and 2 DDr2 slots and the total RAM capable on the mobo was 4 GB!! How do they get that? So I also looked a different mobo with the same DDR/DDR2 slot arrangement and they list the RAM capability was 2GB. Is this a misprint? Here is the link: Gigabyte mobo
I can't speak for the other mobo, but my guess is that it's either a misprint or some odd design flaw (which shouldn't happen considering the 915 supports 4GB natively). Well, DDR sizes go 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB (1024MB), and 2GB (2048MB)...but the last two sizes get awfully pricey.
