RDRAM - Pro's Con's? Etc.?

So I have my 1066MHz RDRAM in a world of DDR... honestly I really don't know what it's advantages are over DDR and where DDR overshines it.

Price out of the picture because I've already had this for a year, so just talking performance. I'd like to compare it to like PC3200 DDR or so max rather than like PC4000 or something. Oh, also, DDR when paired up with another P4 rather than an AMD system.

I know in a synthetic benchmark like SiSoftSandra's Memory Bandwidth RDRAM does really well... stock speeds with my P4 2.26 I usually get ~3350/3350, overclocked just a little (maybe 2.5Ghz - what, around 146/148 FSB? Approaching 1200MHz) I get ~3700/3700.

So... games performance? Workstation performance? Any other different kinds of apps?

Just wondering Basically I just want any information you have so if you know something just tell me.

Well, I had an Abit TH7-II for about a year and a half. I could get about 3500 in Sandra Benchmarks. Now with my dual channel DDR PC3200 I can get about 5600 in Sandra Benchmarks.

The combination of the increased memory bandwidth, and the increased processor speed makes this computer 10x as fast as my TH7-II with PC800. I can render a 1 hour video in about 20 minutes now, as opposed to around 2 hours with my old setup. I would have to say the gains are significant, so sell that board, the ram, and the processor and get yourself a new system. Then again, I am biased and completely infected with the upgrade at all costs bug.

One con that I am very aware of is price. It cost me some $80+ do upgrade from 256 to 512 mb. You must have sold your kidney for your gig. Also, there is no rdram out to go with a 800mhz FSB CPU.

As for performance, I would like to know that myself. When I was buying my system about half a year ago, I was under the impression that rdram was the best on the market, but thats obviously no longer true.

the only real thing RDRAM ever held over DDR was the fact it had so much more bandwidth to offer, DCDDR removed this advantage.

Thanks but again stay away from telling me about upgradeability and price, etc. because I already have the sticks and the mobo and I'll have them another year or so. Not having RDRAM chipsets for the new mobo's isn't a problem for me, since with my next upgrade I'd be getting new RAM, mobo, CPU, everything. I'd probably be getting DDR II in my next system.

Needitcooler, is that memory bandwidth with your [email protected]? Well of course you're going to get an ultra-high score with the faster CPU + high FSB.

Only thing so far that I don't really like about RD is that you can't really overclock it very well. I can only get to like 148FSB on 4X. My mobo only offers up to 150FSB in BIOS anyways so switching to 3X for 2 more MHz FSB isn't really worth it.

And of course I could have 2 gigs of decent DDR for how much I've paid for my 1 gig of RD But again I don't care about that right now lol.

BTW this is the 16-bit RDRAM not the 32-bit RDRAM. I have the P4T533-C not the P4T533.

The one thing of my rdram board that i didnt like is that it always had to be installed in pairs. It just got kinda weird with a crimm's and stuff.

this explains it nicely
http://www.cadimensions.com/requirements3.htm
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00224/

I have a very similar setup to your own. I built it at a really bad time, at the time I put it all together, RDRAM was still king and the PT4533-C was winning all sorts of awards as the best high-end Intel MB on the market.

A couple months later the 800mhz FSB boards came out and everyone started talking about DCDDR. Now I'm selling my mobo, ram, chip, and I've just placed an order at newegg for a 2.4C, 1 gig of Geil PC4200, an Abit IC7-G, (which I'll probably resell in turn when the Max3 comes out) and an Antec True Control 550W power supply, (I've found that my 400W sparkle just isn't cutting it, I need a lot more 12V current than the 16A it provides).

lol yep, I built mine last August... about 1 YTD actually... it was more than just a "few" months though, I'd say maybe 6-7 until Springdales and Canterwoods started popping up with dual channel IIRC. I personally have no need to upgrade though, my system runs all the new games perfectly fine and I'll just plan my next upgrade to be next summer.

Oh I'm also not disappointed with my purchase though since dual channel wasn't available at the time, and even if I did go with DDR it would be unlikely that I'd be buying a new mobo just for dual channel.

Also, thanks for those articles CrazyP, buying RD at the time was a good choice after all But of course dual channel is the way to go now even ignoring the fact that the I850E is the last chipset to support RD.

well, the I850E is still a very good chipset in my view, if you remember the earlier DCDDR releases of the E7205 etc, the I850E was still outperforming them, I think it was the SiS R658. Plus I believe that SiS is working on another quad channel chipset for RDRAM.

Dan

Yep - http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/chipsets/display/news6059.html

Quad channel... *drool*... wonder if my 4 sticks of 1066 would be able to work... in that article it says that 4 sticks of 1066 would have about 8.5GB/S theoretical bandwidth, which makes sense of course since it's quad channel instead of dual.

now all you need a processor to match