Worth Waiting for SPringdale ?

Hmm... just going through last minute thought processes before ordering my new rig.

Looks as if springale will be here in mid May.. i dont really want to wait but given that it will support forthcoming prescotts as well as 800fsb P4's im having second thoughts about ordering the 8INXP

A few questions:


-Will a 800fsb 3ghz P4 running on a springdale board be much faster than a 3ghz P4 on a 8INXP ?

-Are there any other features on the springdale that'll be worth having ?

-Will the springdale setup overclock well.. maybe the P4+8INXP will actually achieve a higher clock speed ??



I think my overall plan is to upgrade to skip prescott and upgarde to Tejas >5ghz with >1000 FSB and DDR2 in 2004/2005 so in a way i dont really need prescott compatability. Maybe i should just buy now otherwise ill be waiting for ever for whats just aroudn teh next corner.

Yes. It's up in the air right now whether the GB boards can support the new 800MHz CPUs coming out. i am personally waiting for the Canterwood chipset and will wait for reviews and forum feedback before i jump in.

also not to mention that the agp8x is messed on the granite bay and intel admits that the chipset on granite bay is messed up and wont be fixed,id wait reasons y,garenteed to run 8x/800fsb+/ddr400+

if you want the best thing thats coming out tomorrow, you'll never have a computer ; ). Just look at my siggy (I just bought last friday).

jackal2513 said:

A few questions:

-Will a 800fsb 3ghz P4 running on a springdale board be much faster than a 3ghz P4 on a 8INXP ?

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I hate to sound like Bill Clinton, but that all depends on how you define faster. Will it show a clear advantage on synthetic benchmarks? Almost certainly. Will it show a visually notable improvement in game and application performance? That is much less certain.

We have seen a rate of diminishing returns on bus and memory speed improvements over the last couple of cycles, and I don't expect the 800MHz bus to change that trend. This is mostly an educated guess, but I expect no more than a ten percent improvement in framerates. If your programs would benefit from a ten percent improvement (like if you own Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 or 2003) then it might be worth the wait. But if the applications you want to use are already generating 100+FPS on a Northwood/845PE setup, you won't see any improvement with your eyes.

jackal2513 said:

-Are there any other features on the springdale that'll be worth having ?

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Again, possibly. The big one is northbridge support for S-ATA drives. This means the bus will be able to fully handle the 150MB/sec of burst data transfer. What this is going to mean for performance is a subject of great debate. I don't see anything to suggest S-ATA will be any faster in application performance than ATA100 or 133. But if you are jonesing for a S-ATA drive, this is a real good reason to wait.

jackal2513 said:

-Will the springdale setup overclock well.. maybe the P4+8INXP will actually achieve a higher clock speed ??

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Nobody knows, but it could be a step back from the GB. The Granite Bay boards are made on a six-layer PCB while the 865 boards will use a four-layer PCB. Some users feel the GB's overclocking success is strongly linked to the clearer signal allowed by the two extra layers.

You should also remember that the 865 boards and Northwood C chips are going to be a new line of products. I wouldn't be surprised if the first generation of these products overclocked as well as the first generation of the socket 423 P4's and 845 boards. That wasn't very good at all.

jackal2513 said:

I think my overall plan is to upgrade to skip prescott and upgarde to Tejas >5ghz with >1000 FSB and DDR2 in 2004/2005 so in a way i dont really need prescott compatability. Maybe i should just buy now otherwise ill be waiting for ever for whats just aroudn teh next corner.

Click to expand...

If you can see that far into the future, could you ask your crystal ball for next week's lottery numbers?




BHD

Re: Re: Worth Waiting for SPringdale ?

BaldHeadedDork said:

You should also remember that the 865 boards and Northwood C chips are going to be a new line of products. I wouldn't be surprised if the first generation of these products overclocked as well as the first generation of the socket 423 P4's and 845 boards. That wasn't very good at all.
BHD

Click to expand...

this is the only thing i dont want to heppen LoL

wait wait wait

generally waiting is a major question. It is usually not a big deal from one chipset to the next, but this is a huge jump. 800mhz proc support, prescot support, integrated SATA(which i realy want), fixed 8x agp, and maybe most of all dcddr with ddr400. These are huge technology jumps, ones that i am willing to wait a few months for.

I think a month or two ago i would have waited, but may is not that far off, especially if you are in school, with spring break, and finals you won't even notice the time pass.

After that last catastrophe with the first round of p4's i would doubt that Intel will allow the new procs to prefrom that poorly. They were very pressured by AMD to release their first p4's, and now there is little or no pressure. This should allow for plenty of testing and caution going into their new pieces of hardware.

I suggest you wait. this should be one worth the exercise of patience.

in school !!! I left school about 16 years ago now ....

from what ive read im sure in terms of benchmark scores it will be an improvemnet over grainte bay but in terms of real world performance of running games and apps it wont mnake much impact (until Doom5 comes out that is).

I ve now bought my hardware - couldnt be boethered to wait anymore. By the time you buy your springdale board, everyone will be talking about a 5ghz tejas running on a grantsdale board with 1200 fsb and dual DDR2.

By the time my next upgrade comes aroudn prescott will have gone so theres no point in me waiting to get the benefit of prescott functionality with a springdale board but if thats your goal then its definitely worth waiting id say.

I reckon my rig running at 3.7ghz will serve me pretty well for 18months or so and cope with everything that i throw at it.

The Granite Bay boards are made on a six-layer PCB while the 865 boards will use a four-layer PCB. Some users feel the GB's overclocking success is strongly linked to the clearer signal allowed by the two extra layers.

You should also remember that the 865 boards and Northwood C chips are going to be a new line of products. I wouldn't be surprised if the first generation of these products overclocked as well as the first generation of the socket 423 P4's and 845 boards. That wasn't very good at all.

Click to expand...

I think that a lot that is in the 7205 Granite Bay is being tested and fixed for the I865 chipsets. Plus added support for S-ATA and DDR333-400.

Maybe these will help - Maybe not. If you are already running a granite bay at 185fsb+, I don't think that there will be major
improvement.