AMD lover going to "try" intel, read on...

im a very avid amd fan, but i have decided to give intel another shot. a p3 (500) was my first computer. (built by me) and want to try it again. do you reccomend a old p3 or a older p4, maybe the new p4 series? i have never tried overclocking one, say a board that i can overclock will be good. and what size processor you reccomend for the m.b


thanks in advance

Welcome back to the good side my friend As far as what chip to get, I either go with the new p3 tulatin (sp?) or the new P4 Northwoods. Don't bother with the older P4's (Williamette's) cause they have a smaller cache, and are only a couple dollars cheaper. If I were you, obviously this is biased a little, I would get the new P4 1.6a or 1.8a ($129 and $183 in that order). The 'a' on the end denotes that it is a northwood. If money is no issue to you, I would recommend getting either a 2.0 or 2.2. The prices for a 2.0 run about 260 and a 2.2 runs around 380. All the prices are off of newegg.com. Any way you go, however, you will be able to overclock the heck out of these chips. The 1.6a can overclock as high as 2.7! While the 2.0 or 2.2 can't get that high a percentage of an overclock, they can overclock really high as well. I have my 2.0a at 2.72 with full load temps not going over 42 celcius.

I would offer you some advice on the newer P3's, but I don't really know too much about them, besides you can get a pretty decent overclock. Maybe you can do a search for some threads on this, or someone who knows somthing about them can chime in and help you out.

As far as motherboards, I'll give you the RDRam side, as once again, I am not really familiar with DDR. Don't be scared away by the bad things you always here from DDR fans about Rambus though. At the current moment, you can pick up 128 megs of RDRam for as low at $29 on pricewatch (although you have to be careful what ram you get...if you have questions just post and I'll help out) and 256 chips can get had for 66. The one thing about the RDRam boards is that you must have TWO sticks of Rambus, as they work in pairs. If you want 256 megs total ram, get two 128 sticks. If you want 512 megs TOTAL ram, bet TWO 256 sticks.

Anyways, back to the boards. There are two main RDRam boards everyone is using. The Abit THII (which offers a raid controller) and the Asus P4T-E. Both have their ups and downs, but both are really really good boards. I have the P4T-E and LOVE it. I haven't had one problem yet.

Hope this helps! Glad the AMD Demons finally release you

if you just want to get an Intel for the fun of overclocking it, then I would suggest a P4 Northy (1.6a or 1.8a on air, 2.0a or higher from more extreme cooling), or a Tualatin Celly (1.0a or 1.1a on air, 1.2a or higher for more extreme cooling)...probably the best overclocking chips on the market. You will have a lot of fun stretching either of this chips to their limits. I would go with an Abit ST6 for the taullies, but I am not familiar enough with the P4's to recommend a mobo for them.

AMD rox, but I have followed the everlasting need for speed demon & I have found myself surfin with a $117.00 2.6GHZ P4. I have had great luck with the TH7 II. I have put together KT7 RAIDS as well as the KG7 RAIDS and figured I'd split the difference. So I wen't with Intel on an Abit board on my quest for speed. I honestly didn't know Abit was a big contender in the Intel market. I always hung out at Paul's just assumed it was targeted more towards AMD fans. Boy was I wrong! This board is bringing it and I totally recomend it to anyone. I have had a couple of issues at the beginning, but all in all after the bugs are worked out I have no regrets. The issues I refer to were results of my ignorance anyway and all the folks her at OC pitch it so no worries. I like the fact the RD stuff gives you huge bandwidth!

I would recommend P4 DDR solution since you already have a stick of DDR RAM.
The SiS645DX Chipset supports DDR333 offcially and even DDR400 unofficially.
You can overclock your DDR266 @ DDR333.
The memory bandwidth is almost same as PC800 RDRAM.
Not bad at all !

is this a good sis 645 m.b?


HB-M930 Motherboard Specification





Processors
Support Intel Pentium 4 Socket-478 Processors at 400MHz FSB (up to 2.2GHz CPU speed)
BIOS automatically detects CPU speed, jumperless design

Memory
4 DIMM slots for PC100/133 or DDR333/266/200 (Maximum 2.0GB)
(SDRAM and DDR-RAM can not be use on the same time)

I don't like PC-Chips.
They are cheap but not decent.
Go with better brand such as ASUS, Abit, Epox ...

okay cheap and not decent. what about for this price....


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2020826952

That's amazing ! $25 bucks so far with 10 quantity.
But I don't expect this auction would be ended within $100.
I've heard that PC-Chips are one of the branch of ECS.
Anyway, they are very cheap.
But you had better expect almost no options in bios for overclocking and poor support.
Well, but if you can get them around $50, that's a deal.

p.s look at the prior auctions , they price doesnt raise THAT high


i think i would built it and see what it can do. i just bought 3 of the cases. w/o anything. 2$ plus 18 shipping.

VaTechHokies said:

The one thing about the RDRam boards is that you must have TWO sticks of Rambus, as they work in pairs...

Click to expand...

Not necessarily: can't you just get a RIMM continuity module if you just have 1 stick?

And BTW: I bid on this one about 20 minutes ago (actually before i read this post: amazing, huh?) by the same company: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2021851707

i checked their website, and they make tons of comps, but to see that they're legit, you just have to take a quick qlance at the user feedback. Have one on me!

TheJackamo said:

Not necessarily: can't you just get a RIMM continuity module if you just have 1 stick?

Click to expand...

Nope, you must use two RIMMs with the i850 memory controller. There are a couple of reasons for this, but they are pretty technical, and I can't remember the exact details. Basically the width of one stick of rambus is 16 bit and the memory controller adds the two sticks together to get a 32 bit width. The i850 requires this 32 bit width, and with only one stick of you RDRam you would only get a 16 bit width.

The crimms are used when there are 4 memory slots, and you only use two of the slots. The crimms are just dummy sticks that are put in the mobo to close the circuit.

Having said this, I have heard that with the older Rambus boards (mainly the i820 or it might be i815) it was possible to use only one RIMM, but this is not the case with the i850.

Hope it makes sense, I just woke up

VaTechHokies

VaTechHokies said:

The crimms are used when there are 4 memory slots, and you only use two of the slots. The crimms are just dummy sticks that are put in the mobo to close the circuit.

Having said this, I have heard that with the older Rambus boards (mainly the i820 or it might be i815) it was possible to use only one RIMM, but this is not the case with the i850.

Hope it makes sense, I just woke up

VaTechHokies

Click to expand...

That's right, VaTech. The i850 memory controller is tailored for "Dual-channel RAMBUS." This means that the memory is required to operate in both channels. This gives for a peak bandwidth of 3.2GB/s. This is why the RAMBUS/P4 combo works so well.

The old chipset you were thinking of was the i820 "Camino" chipset for the Pentium III. This was a "single-channel RAMBUS" controller. You did not need to have two sticks of RAMBUS to operate, but it only gives for half the bandwidth of Dual-channel RAMBUS, which turns out to be 1.6GB/s, the same as a single-channel PC1600 DDR solution.