P4/Via and SDRAM....

Howdy folding freaks,

Wellll, seems this old AMDiehard had a P4 mobo drop in his lap. Nothing spectacular though. Just an ECS P4VXASD2 s478, via chipset. I don't have the first clue about it's history though, so dunno yet if it's a goer or not.

Anyway, it takes DDR or SDRAM, and I've got quite a bit of SDRAM around. Money is very tight as ever, especially having just moved, and so I'm thinking I could get it folding with SDRAM if I can scratch enough for a CPU and sink.

Now, knowing diddly squat about p4 folding issues, I thought I had better ask if there's a practical limit to the CPU speed and core type that can benefit from SDRAM. What I mean is, is there a point in getting a 2.8G chip if it will only fold as fast as a 1.8G on the SDRAM? Also is there any point getting a woody over a willy etc? Are all the P4 cellys to be avoided or are the celly Ds okay for folding?

I realise it might get some DDR down the road, but realistically it will be a long long road.

Any other insights about folding on this board would be welcome also,

Thanks in advance for anything useful,

Road Warrior

im running a p4 1.6 willie with 640mb pc133 sdram in a dell dimension. It takes an hour per frame to fold qmd's. I have a celeron D 330 and a p4 2.66 that each have 512mb ram and fold the same qmd in 30min. I hear that QMD's are really memory intensive, but the ddr machines are only getting 5 more ppd/ghz than the sdram machine. My tualatin 1000 whips the p4 1.6 even at stock speed though. I would base your cpu selection with DDR in mind and just use sdram until you can get DDR. Good luck.

Willies had less cache and were dreadful from what I can remember.

Best bet may be to source a 1.6 or 1.8GHz P4A northy and overclock it if you can? Upping the FSB to 533MHz would mean a boost to 2.1GHz or 2.4GHz respectively.

also, if you use a celeron d for folding, it should do qmd's. my 1000 tualatin at 1333 will fold p147x wu's at the same rate as the celeron at 2666. I would stay away from any celeron that isnt the "d" model. the "d" models really need the fsb cranked way up to fold efficiently. I have a p4 2.8 dell with 1024 cache that does qmd's at a rate of about 17min/frame.