Intel's new chipset Granite Bay got some suprisingly low scores in some benchmarks :(

[csu]

I thought dual channel DDR would give better performance but in quite a significant portion of the benchmarks the PE chipset does better than E7205!

http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q4/021125/index.html

Given the similar performance, why would anyone get a E7205 (granite bay) but not a PE?

[EluSiOn]

I always enjoy looking at your avatar pic..... who is she?


dual channel DDR works pretty good on NForce2 mobo for AMD....

This is weird that on the Intel side, it didnt perform that well...

and ouch for intel..
complete chipset is pricey at $57 wonder the retail price for the complete mobo will be... damn... just NB and SB is 57 bucks....

[csu]

I always enjoy looking at your avatar pic..... who is she?

So do I. :)

I found the pic on some Asian forum.

[BaldHeadedDork]

Right now, I think everyone is hoping the GB boards will overclock higher. That's really the last compelling reason to buy one.

I think most of us had unrealistic expectations for the Granite Bay and its D-DDR. We thought it was going to stomp the 845 and 850 chipsets. But this release of D-DDR with support for PC2100 "only" offers the memory bandwidth of PC1066 RDRAM. If you look at old benchmarks for the 850 boards using PC1066, they look almost exactly like the scores we're now seeing for GB. Including game performance only a couple of FPS better than the 845PE.

Elusion makes a good point about the difference between the nForce2 and GB. I think this is further proof of the importance of memory speed. At the default speeds, which is how these tests are run, the GB is using DDR266 and the nForce is running DDR400. I think this suggests that while Granite Bay's D-DDR doesn't have a performance advantage today, that will change as processor and FSB speeds increase. A year from now a .09 micron Prescott P5 running D-DDR400 is going to have a much larger performance advantage over any single channel DDR setup.

Price is going to be a big issue for GB boards. Ed at the mothersite is saying between $175-200, which sounds about right. (GB also has to be built on six layer PCB's, adding more cost.)

I personally don't think the GB will be a big seller for Intel. The price is too high and the PE/GE boards offer very competitive performance at a much lower cost. But this is the way of the future for Intel systems.

There are more conversations on this subject in the Intel Mobo forum if anyone is interested.


BHD

[csu]

A year from now a .09 micron Prescott P5 running D-DDR400 is going to have a much larger performance advantage over any single channel DDR setup.

By the time Prescott 3.6 and dual channel DDR400 are ready, granite bay will already be obsolete. So this means I'm paying extra money for nothing if I get GB now.

I need a stable gaming system for the holiday that'll work well with Radeon9700 pro :(

[BaldHeadedDork]

I agree with you 100%. I'm going to skip the GB boards and buy a PE with two sticks of Corsair XMS3500 so I can carry the memory over to a GB2 system.

That's what I'm recommending for now. If you go this way you won't have AGP8X support, but no game uses it, either. If you have to have 8X you can look at the SiS boards, but they don't overclock nearly as well as the 845E/PE.


BHD

[Avatar28]

Just a thought, but any thoughts on how GB would perform if you dropped in, say, a C1 stepping CPU and overclocked the hell out of it? Let's say that I bought one like the MSI GNB Max. What kind of overclock should I expect out if it? Any chance of getting up to something like 366-400 on the memory bus and FSB both? Dual channel DDR400 would give you like 6.4 gig/sec of memory bandwidth.

[lonewolf1983]

if you think about it the bandwidth offered by GB is exactly the same as offered by pc1066 RDRAM, and the performance is similar for this reason.
Over here in Aus, pc1066 RDRAM is very expensive and hard to get, therefore a DDR platform with the same performance at a lower cost is a good thing, maybe you guys should look outside the United states box you live in eh? :)

[BaldHeadedDork]

Originally posted by Avatar28
Just a thought, but any thoughts on how GB would perform if you dropped in, say, a C1 stepping CPU and overclocked the hell out of it? Let's say that I bought one like the MSI GNB Max. What kind of overclock should I expect out if it? Any chance of getting up to something like 366-400 on the memory bus and FSB both? Dual channel DDR400 would give you like 6.4 gig/sec of memory bandwidth.

That's the $25,000 question. If the GB exceeds the overclocking abilities of the 845 boards there will be one reason to buy it.

But no one knows for certain how the chipset will overclock because production boards have not been released yet. Its also not guaranteed that the GB will even match the 845E/G. If you look at the history of Intel chipsets it will be a surprise if it is a good overclocking board. With a couple of exceptions (440BX and 845E/G) Intel has always gone out of their way to make overclocking as difficult as possible. Maybe the success of the Northwood and 845E/G has changed some minds at Intel, but I'm skeptical about their commitment to our small part of the market.


BHD

[cack01]

I just wish that INTEL wouls have supported a speed higher than 266. Personally I don't feel GB is a good buy simply b/c of that reason. It manages to perform almost on par with a RD system, and that shows alot of promise. As soon as it supports something as fast as DDR333 or 400. Then it's probably going to kick but. Hopefully soon a reviewer will get a board with overclocking features, and well see if the chipset can actually run at those speeds.

[NookieN]

Well there's no good reason for it to support ddr 333 if you're going to run a 133 fsb processor in it. The fsb bandwidth of that processor is matched by dual channel ddr 266. If you run your processor at 166+ (which most people looking at GB hope to do), then ddr 333 makes sense. But Intel doesn't have any reason to promise that ddr 333 will work in the board when there are no 166 fsb processors.

[cack01]

Can you blame me for wishing?? :) Anyways I think all our questions will be answered when a someone puts out a good review of a GB board.

[quegyboe]

Seems to me that...

Dual Channel DDR 266 = PC1066 RDRam ;)

[Avatar28]

Nookie is right. If you're running at 133 FSB then having it support faster memory won't help. Kind of the NForce and an AMD. If you increase the FSB by overclocking, keep the same 1:1 memory speed and stick some faster RAM in there. I've seen a couple of boards reviewed. I think they got the MSI up to around 186 FSB and presumably the RAM as well.

[csu]

Originally posted by quegyboe
Seems to me that...

Dual Channel DDR 266 = PC1066 RDRam ;)

nope, the PE's better than GB in most gaming benchmarks.

[Fluxer]

Hmm so the Intel GB chipset with dual-DDR that isn't even out yet performs almost as well (not quite as well) as pc1066 RDRAM which has been out for months. It was obviously a smart decision by Intel to switch to DDR. I mean, RDRAM -- with a well developed and optimized chipset: i850e -- is obviously not as good as the slower speeds of DDR (both latency and speed) and the new underdeveloped dual-DDR which isn't even out yet but is already being beat by RDRAM chipsets which were out months ago. Sorry but I find some of Intel's decisions to be pretty comical. I guess the bottom line is that the market wants DDR -- not faster RDRAM for the same price.

Also, if you argue that the ddr266 chipset may be overclockable, it can also be argued that pc1066 RDRAM can also be overclocked. And keep in mind, as RDRAM speed increases, the latency decreases -- the opposite occurs with DDR.

[SBeaver]

Nothing wrong with chosing a GB over a 850E board however, especially if you have some older ram that you can't afford to replace.
After all, DDR is half the price of RDRAM and that applies to GB just as any other board.
Two pc2700 sticks will get you far, on a GB board while they are not so good for PE.

[Fluxer]

Original Samsung pc1066 costs about $100 at Googlegear.com (give or take a few dollars if you want 16 or 32bit). Pc1066 is not twice as expensive (especially if you get quality pc3500 which is more expensive than pc1066) and to top it off, it performs better.

However, due to many new features, DDR boards are not quite as fast but can be a better choice. I was criticizing Intel for not continuing with RDRAM because if they had continued with RDRAM, we would probably have new memory that's faster than pc1066 and RDRAM boards that are feature rich right now.

[BaldHeadedDork]

I understand what you're saying Fluxer but there isn't a lot of evidence to support it.

I think I read on the mothersite (oc.com) that Rambus was having a very difficult time getting PC1220 RDRAM certified because it has heat related instability problems. I'm not saying they can't be beat, but as we sit today there is a lot more known headroom in D-DDR than in RDRAM.

We should also remember that competitive pricing on RDRAM memory is a very recent phenomenon. Until Intel launched the 845 and made SDRAM and DDR-RAM an option for P4 systems, PC800 Rambus was consistently 30% more expensive than the fastest DDR. Without direct competition for customers in the P4 market, I have great doubts that Rambus would have been so interested in making their products affordable.

Finally, we can't overlook the strained relationship between Intel and Rambus over the last couple of years. They blame each other, and each has some truth to their argument. But the final verdict has to be that committing to Rambus and the RDRAM standard cost Intel hundreds of billions of dollars in lost sales. (I firmly believe that Rambus was as responsible as AMD for the success of the Athlon.) Intel is far from perfect, but they will not give any competitor the opportunity they handed AMD three years ago. If the mass market wants SDRAM or DDR systems, that's what Intel will give them.


BHD

[SBeaver]

Originally posted by Fluxer
Original Samsung pc1066 costs about $100 at Googlegear.com (give or take a few dollars if you want 16 or 32bit). Pc1066 is not twice as expensive (especially if you get quality pc3500 which is more expensive than pc1066) and to top it off, it performs better.

However, due to many new features, DDR boards are not quite as fast but can be a better choice. I was criticizing Intel for not continuing with RDRAM because if they had continued with RDRAM, we would probably have new memory that's faster than pc1066 and RDRAM boards that are feature rich right now.

You there is a lot of cheap DDR available too, and you just need pc2100 to get on par with RDRAM so I still say you can get DDR for half the price, if not less, of RDRAM.
And if you want some ram that will hold out longer and work with the new Canterwood (right?) you can go for more expensive pc3200 or higher but you can't compare those prices with RDRAM which can't go higher.

[csu]

Originally posted by SBeaver


You there is a lot of cheap DDR available too, and you just need pc2100 to get on par with RDRAM so I still say you can get DDR for half the price, if not less, of RDRAM.
And if you want some ram that will hold out longer and work with the new Canterwood (right?) you can go for more expensive pc3200 or higher but you can't compare those prices with RDRAM which can't go higher.

According to http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Nov/bch20021126017505.htm , the DDR400 memory that will be used in Canterwood will be different from the DDR400 memory used today.

[SBeaver]

Originally posted by csu


According to http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Nov/bch20021126017505.htm , the DDR400 memory that will be used in Canterwood will be different from the DDR400 memory used today.

Hehe I just have to post one of the comments from that article ;)


In my book, Intel has been speedily progressing in favor of faster processors. Meanwhile, AMD, the underdog has been slowly progressing to a BETTER ALL AROUND PROCESSOR, and they have SUCCEEDED in doing so, but have gone mostly unnoticed because of Intel's faster processors. In my opinion, I dont need 3.2Ghz! I'm perfectly fine with 1.7!


Edit: Just read it again, it wasn't as funny as I first thought, or maybe he is dumber than I can even imagine
The guys reason for not getting and Intel processor is because he doesn't need the extra performance it gives.

[JCLW]

I wonder how the 7205 compares to the 7505. Because the 7505 does well in the SMP world.

Rumor has it there will be another 7205 stepping that will support DDR333.

Looks like both DDRI-400 & DDRII-400 will be available.

- JW

[csu]

more articles on Granite Bay + overclocking

http://www.amd3d.com/modules.php?name=Reviews&rop=showcontent&id=8&page=1

http://www.hexus.net/review.php?review=463

I have never overclocked before, what kind of cooling equipment do I need? Or can I just go with stock cooling fans?