Need some help choosing mobo and ram

Synaesthetic · Post by **Synaesthetic** » Wed Sep 04, 2002 7:15 pm

I am considering buying a Intel Pentium IV 2.40Ghz socket 478 Northwood 533FSB CPU and I really could use some advice on what motherboard to buy.

I think I will use RDRAM PC1020/1200 and my "old" Creamware Powersampler card. OS: Windows XP and Windows 2000SE. Apps: mostly Cubase SX, Gigasampler, Reason 2.0 and NE Reaktor.

How about ASUS P4T533 i850E 533FSB ATX or ASUS P4T533-C? They don't support ATA-133 disks but I could just buy a RAID card if I ever need this function, right? Or do I just have to upgrade the bios in the future to get this function? And the fact that there's mobos with Serial Ata on the market doesn't make it easier to decide...

-OR-
Should I wait until the new mobos with DDR 400 and DDR 553 support hits the market? Maybe they will be too expensive or too slow compared to RDRAM1066 and RDRAM 1200???

I'm a musician who wants to do a good investment, not a hardware pro.. Maybe I should look on some alternative cpu, mobo, ram.. Please post any suggestions, advice and experiences you might have!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Synaesthetic on 2002-09-05 07:07 ]</font>

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Thu Sep 05, 2002 10:02 am

Well, i have a P4T533-C and i must say, this board is really good, cool, very configurable, rock solid, alot of features, good design for us, cuz of different busses for agp, usb, ide, pci..., dualchannel memory is fast-fast-fast. If you overclock it, it goes faster almost exponetially cuz of this. The big difference that i understood between P4T533 and P4T533-C, is that the P4T533-C model use 16bits rimm and P4T533 use 32bits rimm. You would think that 32 bits goes faster, NOT AT ALL, it is because they mount 2 modules of 16bits onto a single rimm, just to prevent the use of memory in pairs. It is the same thing beside that. BTW 16bits rimm is almost the same price as DDR these days. And PC1066 is very very good specialy if you use STS series sample, as they use system memory, and PC1066 is fast, no clicks-pops-crakles or whatever.

Using a system with DDR one of my friend had these before, after he changed for a system with rambus, he can load the sts fully with big programs, long samples, and no clicks at all.

I don't know for sure if it is the rambus or the board, but this board fly, and once you'll get it, you'll find bunch of very funny features, like a talking bios (! yes talking in english, french, spanish) to tell you status of the system at boot time. Not very usefull but very funny!

w_ellis · Post by **w_ellis** » Thu Sep 05, 2002 2:12 pm

Can anyone confirm or deny what marcuspocus has said in his post above, as I am about to buy a 2.4Ghz P4-based PC using DDR266/333. If it will make a significant difference then I would consider Rambus instead, but it would add about £120 to the price (approx $180) here.

Currently I am intending to buy a Gigabyte GA-8IEX motherboard. If anyone has any comments on this choice, good or bad, then please let me know.

Cheers,
Will

Synaesthetic · Post by **Synaesthetic** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 9:42 am

I asked the same question at the community of Tom's Hardware and I got this answer from Crashman:

"The Gigabyte GA-8IHXP has better technology (in the form of the ICH4 southbridge) and better features than the P5T533-C.

Forget DDR400/DDR533 competing with PC1200, DDR400 isn't available at Cas2, and DDR533 is a pipe dream right now. DDRII (which is actually QDR)is still a few months away. Sometime this month SiS is supposed to release a Dual Channel DDR chipset, you could buy now or wait a couple weeks to see what happens there."

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 11:24 am

People on hardware sites don't use their computers in the same way you will.

The Gigabyte may have more features, but they sit on the PCI bus, so I don't necessarily see IDE RAID, an NEC USB2.0 controller, etc, as an advantage for you.

I wouldn't get the ASUS P4T533, although it is fast, as it seems to be experiencing some growing pains. Maybe in a month or two, but still, the 32bit RDRAM isn't as wide spread.

I'd personally go with the ASUS P4T533-C board if I was buying right now...

Post by **garyb** » Tue Sep 10, 2002 11:42 am

the voice of experience..........

Synaesthetic · Post by **Synaesthetic** » Wed Sep 11, 2002 12:05 pm

On 2002-09-10 12:24, subhuman wrote:
...The Gigabyte may have more features, but they sit on the PCI bus, so I don't necessarily see IDE RAID, an NEC USB2.0 controller, etc, as an advantage for you...

Why? Do these features increase the risk for PCI overload?

BTW - thanks everyone for all your replies, I really appreciate your help!

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Wed Sep 11, 2002 2:09 pm

Exactly...

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Wed Sep 11, 2002 3:14 pm

... and most of them will be on the same PCI bus as your PCI slots. Part of the trick is to find out how the routing's done on the motherboard, before you buy. It would be maybe easier for Pulsarians to just see a map of a mobo instead of bus bandwidth specs etc. Cos those are less important than this lay-out.

Remember the famous BX motherboards, with PC66/100 RAM. They only had a Pentium II but could reserve more steady bandwidth for the CW cards on the PCI bus than VIA w PC133 memory.

jbraner · Post by **jbraner** » Mon Sep 23, 2002 7:00 am

Guys,
To save typing, check out my post in the "P4 and motherboard 845 chipset" thread.

The Asus P4B533-V mobo worked great with DDR333 memory (I got the idea from a tomshardware.com article - it's mentioned in the other thread).

Everything went well - so far so good

John Braner

Synaesthetic · Post by **Synaesthetic** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 8:28 am

I bought the Asus P4T533-C, 512 mb Samsung PC1020 rdram and a boxed Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz 533fsb. It runs so smooth and I haven't even tweaked it yet!
Could somebody tell me about this "reverb test" that all SFP users doing to benchmark their system?

Thanks for your help everyone, now I am a happy musician (without any money

)again!

spacef · Post by **spacef** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:16 am

pc1020 ? you mean DDR SDRAM 2100 ?

Synaesthetic · Post by **Synaesthetic** » Thu Oct 17, 2002 10:24 am

Oops, sorry! I meant PC1066 RDRAM.
(RDRAM = rimm = rambus)