New Mobo recommendation please

[Schorsch]

Originally posted by Wombat
According to the intel/Rambus contract, the 845+SDRAM wasn't supposed to be allowed to ship for a while yet.
Maybe something changed, or my info was wrong. I'm confused, and would like to know exactly what has happened recently.

According to the German magazine "c't", the DDR version of the i845 chipset is to be released in early 2002. However, there are rumours that it might already be introduced this year, together with the new Pentium 4 version ("Northwood", 130 nm process, 512 kB L2 cache).
Obviously Intel is trying to push the P4 into the market by all means. I wonder what the consequences for rambus will be...

Georg

[Fat Tone]

I just took a look at this review (linked to from the ECS site):

http://www.sysopt.com/reviews/ecs-k7s5a/index2.html

What I cant fathom is why they insisted on comparing apples with oranges? The board can do 133/266, but to compare with an AMD761@266, all they did was overclock some PC1600 a bit. Sure, it looked very promising, but why not do it right?

EecheE - what FSB are you using?

BTW this board is only £57 in UK, has integrated LAN & Audio, and has SDR/DDR sockets!

Tony.

[windigo]

Yes quite an amazing price for that SiS735 chipset only like 109$CAN plus ive seen some reviews that say you should get a new bios first
the p4 chip from SiS looks good to with 2.7GB bandwidth

that is strange merely overclocking the pc1600 ram

[Fat Tone]

Its easy to find other reviews that do it properly. Some put it a tad behind the SiS reference board, some just ahead.
It's just a shame it doesn't have any more overclocking options.

So, if I spend my money now, I could be looking at 1.4GHz for £153 total. I think I'll wait just a couple of weeks to see what predictions come true. You can wait forever for what is 'just around the corner' whilst you could have been experiencing something much better in the meantime.

[Schorsch]

Originally posted by Tony Andrews
So, if I spend my money now, I could be looking at 1.4GHz for £153 total. I think I'll wait just a couple of weeks to see what predictions come true. You can wait forever for what is 'just around the corner' whilst you could have been experiencing something much better in the meantime.

According to the latest rumours, somebody at Asus Germany has claimed that the Asus A7S266 (using the SiS 735) will be released next week. That might be interesting, on the other hand nobody has seen this board yet - we'll have to wait and see...

Georg

[Marshmallowman]

sis 735 is a very nice cheap option, that I think will OC well, the single chip solution will cut costs and increase stability.
(very nice option)

kt266a are the current perfomance board, hopefully via has increased stability as well as performance
(fastest? current board?)

the nforce will be a bit of a dud, it looks as if the "twin bank" technology is rather pointless as the memory bandwidth is limited by the 266 ddr mem/cpu bus not the memory itself, except when using integrated video to use up the spare bandwidth...pity they won't ever be a smp nforce, that way it could actually use the bandwidth.

AND THE SIS 745.....333DDR yes thats going to be fecking excellent board if you can wait.
cheap and stable with perfomance to boot (single chip)
I wonder when it will arrive?

my 5 cents worth

[Fat Tone]

I have to say I like the look of the ECS K7S5A board: Cheap, no need to buy a network card, or audio (until I can aford something good), good reviews and I can split my memory (2*256) between the two systems if needs be.

I will still be waiting a couple of weeks before doing anything, what with all the announcements and speculations at the moment. Looks like I have until Feb to save up for M's next offering.

PS what PSU rating do 1.4Gigs need these days?

Cheers

Tony.

[EecheE]

Tony Andrews: I'm at 133 fsb (which according to marketing speak, it's 266).

My pc's been up for 1 months now, never *ever* locked up. CPU temp never goes above 50C. Play giants, MV2, CS, wolfenstien, etc., no problems. This is my happiest mobo experience.

-EecheE

[Wombat]

I'm not trying to be anal, but if you want to know, you really are at 266MHz FSB. That's the speed that the processor is talking with your north bridge. Your RAM is running at 1/2 FSB. It used to be a safe assumption to say that your RAM was running at FSB speed, but not anymore.

For once, this isn't just marketing doublespeak.

[agallag]

Yup, Wombat's right. The P4 is still lying, with it's quad pumped 100MHz bus (if I remember correctly), but the Athlon is really truely talking to the chipset at 266MHz

[Schorsch]

Originally posted by agallag
Yup, Wombat's right. The P4 is still lying, with it's quad pumped 100MHz bus (if I remember correctly), but the Athlon is really truely talking to the chipset at 266MHz

No, the Athlon uses a 133 MHz double-pumped frontside bus.
True, AMD is talking about a 266 MHz frontside bus on their web pages but obviously they don't care about technical "details" - in their CPU comparison table the Pentium 4 is listed with a 400 MHz frontside bus.