1066 ram question

[nunchalnaomi]

Hi,

I'm building a system for video capture and editing. I will be using the matrox rt.x100, g550, cl audio, removable hard drives, etc .The motherboard will be the asus p4 533c. I am choosing between 232 32 bit or 184 pin 16 bit ram. Will the 232 pin 32 bit be much better? What are the pluses and minuses. Thanks Nunchal

[maharajah]

You have no choice.
The P4T533-C uses 16-bit RDRAM only,
the P4T533 uses 32-bit RDRAM only.
At stock there is no difference in performance.

[davpen]

The 32-bit modules are really only two 16 bits modules put together. The performance is identical. The idea was to simplifiy things a bit in that you only need one module instead of two. The downside is that there is little support for this. The modules are hard to come by and more expensive. I would suggest staying with the 16 bit modules that everyone else uses.


David.

[mutz]

...I agree, but you might want to go for a Gigabyte board - see sig.

[nunchalnaomi]

Hi

Thank you for your info. I will get 16 bit 184 pin 1066 . I'll also look into the gigabyte board. Is it that much better? You guys are fast and informative. You rock Nunchal

[mutz]

The GA-8IHXP came out best in performance in all the tests I have seen, though the difference between the better boards isn't very much. On features, stability and quality, the GA-8IHXP came out far ahead. What I love about the board is that it's invisible, just does it's thing steady as a rock and no problems.

[maharajah]

Just so that you get both sides.
I'm running the P4T533-C, with a 2.0A overclocked to 2.8GHz.
It's rock solid stable. I have never had a crash with this board.
And that's with it doing MPEG2 encoding for days non-stop.
Both the Asus and Gigabyte boards are excellent boards.

[Chrono_Wanderer]

I am using a P4T533-C also. maharajah is right. It's an extrememly fast and solid board. I broght my new rig for around 3 months already. So far my computer has never crashed, and i use it around 12 hrs per day. Truly a high end stable board.

The only difference between Asus and gigabyte boards is that i heard gigabyte boards use smaller capacitors (and maybe a bit, almost insignificantly better materials). So asus p4 boards may last a bit longer/stable because of more stable power around all the bus of the mobo, which is rather important especially for intensive tasks like video capturing. Otherwise Gigabyte is also a very very good choice. Also, consider Abit. They are quite good too.

BTW do u HAVE to use RDRAM? I know it's good for video capture and stuff but DDR333/DDR400 is also quite nice these days. The only pull back for RDRAM based board is that they usually lack the features provided by DDR solutions. The intel RDRAM chipsets are rather behind in features comparing to SiS DDR chipsets IMO, even tho most features are total bullshit. i.e. the asus P4S8X based on SiS 678 has SATA150, AG8X, DDR400 etc. (i know this maybe irrevelent to you since most features u are not going to use, bit i thought this maybe important to point out).

p.s.: my rig looks like urs lol. G550 surely has clean 2d/video. When it comes to games like UT2k3, i don't know why for some reason it's still quite acceptable lol