PC800 RDRAM

[tulane-kormos]

Hello everyone....I am considering buying a new Dell, which is offered with "PC800 RDRAM" I have been doing a little research and have discovered that to buy more pc800 RDRAM is pretty expensive. Is it worth it? Is it really that much faster? Is it going to get cheaper? Also, I have been reading through the post and have seen a lot of posts about "softquatro" and geforce cards. Does softquatro FIX the geforces problem with the hardware overlays or does it just "help out" here and there? Any info would be helpful! Thanks!
Tulane

"Think For Yourself
Question Authority"
- Timothy Leary

[1000101-]

RAM prices are pretty much stable at the moment; its theoretically faster. Though in actual practice its been about the same and in some cases slower than DDRSDRAM or sometimes even SDRAM. As far as the softquadro goes; it helps somewhat; probably about the same as dropping a real quadro in the system. 1 big difference though is the clock speeds aren't the same on the geforce cards. As far as overlay issues; maya 4 doesn't seem to have many problems with them. The quadro cards don't actually do the overlays in hardware either;its all just a driver trick; its still done in software. Though I will say softquadro drivers do tend to have less chance of display errors and the fireframes are slightly faster. Though not every geforce driver will suffer from them; 14.81 I believe it is doesn't have any such glitches whether you use quadro or geforce.
btw; when you say tulane; is that tulane university in new orleans? If so small world :>

That Ole Russell

[goli]

What type of system are you configuring? If you're looking into a P4, then not utilizing the RDRAM doesn't make sense. In other words, pairing a P4 (or Xeon) with DDR SDRAM is underutilizing the FSB of the processor. However, there is a relatively new motherboard that will support PC2700 DDR at 333MHz. The speed is quite comparable to the PC800 RDRAM, and I believe it is significantly more affordable.

[tulane-kormos]

It will be a P4 1.7 - 2.0 G Processor....Is there a lot of difference is there between those speeds?

"Think For Yourself
Question Authority"
- Timothy Leary

[1000101-]

Heheh I guess that means your not from tulane. damn though i had someone in this town to rap with on the subject of digital art ehhe. Actually theres not much difference between the p4 1.7-2.0 ghz. the 2.0 is obviously faster; but not by much.
AMD seems to be a viable solution as of late; and tests show it outperforming P4's at higher clock speeds.
something worth checking? and a good way to save a buck

That Ole Russell

[tulane-kormos]

Not from Tulane...but I visited a couple of years ago...I'm actually named after a Chuck Berry song. Thanks for all the advice, everyone....Happy New Year!
Tulane

"Think For Yourself
Question Authority"
- Timothy Leary

[lobopaco]

Hello,

Okay, let's sum up what I have to say:

1. Buying a Pentium4 with SDRAM makes no sense, IMO. A P4-2000 with SDRAM is about as fast as a P4-1.7 GHz with RDRAM. So if you have only the choice between SDRAM-RDRAM, I'd go RDRAM. If you need more memory, don't buy it at Dell - "on the street" it will be much cheaper.

2. In a few days or weeks, you'll be able to buy P4-systems with DDR-RAM (i845D chipset, forget VIA in my opinion). Its performance is somewhere between SDRAM and RDRAM, with a tendency to RDRAM. So if Dell beginns to ship P4-DDR, it's a better/cheaper choice in most cases - unless you do tons of video editing which is bandwidth-intensive and prefers RDRAM.

3. If you need your new PC for rendering, P4 is a wrong choice in general. The fact is that P4s FPU (=coprocessor) is crippled. Compare the rendering performance of the P4 to AMDs Athlon XP -> Athlon XP-1900+ will be about 40-60% faster in rendering than a P4-2000. And the CPU itself is much cheaper. Sure, in a year or two, software will be better optimised for the Pentium4 and then faster, but who cares what will be in 2 years? I mean, in two years you can buy a 4-4.5 GHz P4 and your P4-2000 will be an oldie.
   I'm not an Athlon fan (because I had a lot of stability problems with them), but they are really fast in rendering.

Greetings

Andillo

[1000101-]

Andillo; I think most of the athlon stability issues have finally been hamered out. I've worked with the AMD 761, and the new VIA-KT266a; both have matured well and are pretty solid platforms. I've just bought myself an nforce for a game box with an athlonXP 1500+ and it hauls.. I even decided I'd test maya on it. I could seriously see nvidia making a workstation chip with its 128 bit DDR memory bus. It'd be like the wahoo on the intergraph ZX10's. In theory; a 128 bit wide DDR bus would crank out more bandwidth than a 2 channel RDRAM solution (4.2gbps as opposed to 3.2gbps; note the 3.2 RDRAM is also in theory). And if Nvidia can finally get a license to Intel's quad pumped 400mhz bus then we can really see the p4 shine.
Heres hoping for neat things in the future..

That Ole Russell

[goli]

Both ECS and MSI have been manufacturing SiS645 MOBO's which support DDR333 for a few months now. Also, the i845 is the current Intel chipset which supports standard PC100/133 SDRAM.

Check this out: http://www.a1-electronics.co.uk/Intel_Section/Mobo_P4/MSI_645Ultra333.shtmlhttp://www.a1-electronics.co.uk/Intel\_Sect...ra333.shtml

In reply to:
2. In a few days or weeks, you'll be able to buy P4-systems with DDR-RAM (i845D chipset, forget VIA in my opinion). Its performance is somewhere between SDRAM and RDRAM, with a tendency to RDRAM. So if Dell beginns to ship P4-DDR, it's a better/cheaper choice in most cases - unless you do tons of video editing which is bandwidth-intensive and prefers RDRAM.

[1000101-]

845D was released in december and available before christmas; it supports DDR SDRAM; but only up to 266mhz. the SiS and Via p4 DDR chipsets outperform it though.
If your going with an intel PC133 version; go with a tulatin PIII you'll be doing yourself a favor.

That Ole Russell

[lobopaco]

In reply to:
Both ECS and MSI have been manufacturing SiS645 MOBO's which support DDR333 for a few months now. Also, the i845 is the current Intel chipset which supports standard PC100/133 SDRAM.

Sure, there is SIS and VIA DDR for P4. But remember? He wrote here that he wants to buy a Dell system, and Dell sells only Intel chipsets, so SIS & Co. are not an option for him.

And the CURRENT i845 (which came out in mid-december) supports PC-2100 DDR RAM. You missed something