Intel 845 DDR Chipset Review

[Guru]

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/941741

Just orderd one to test!

[cbman]

We have a few at the shop we got in to test... I was skeptical... but it holds its own.

If you can afford it though its worth going to Rambus or DDR.

Nothing is worse then popping some guys ego when you prove that a mildly overclocked 1Ghz Celeron can come close to whoopin a 1.5Ghz P4

[Paulr]

The main selling point of the 845D chipset was that although performance wasn't quite as good as the RIMM alternative it was so much cheaper.
With DDR RAM prices increasing and still on their way up there really isn't a great deal to save by going DDR over RIMM.

That being said, it looks like a nice chipset, it will be nice & stable like 95% of Intel chipset's and should be every potential P4 owner's first choice rather than the 845 SDRAM chipset.

I'll stick to my RIMM solution, but the DDR one certainly looks nice.

[Guru]

Mobo Roundup! http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1567

[isochar]

Best quote from the Anandtech article:

Although the P4X266A and SiS 645 chipsets are both faster than the i845 with DDR SDRAM, neither chipset has such a stable following of platforms as the i845. We've been working on a P4X266/ P4X266A roundup alongside the i845 DDR roundup and the maturity of the boards is like night and day; the i845 platforms are much more stable, especially when operated with all memory banks populated.

[Novdid]

A tweaker does want to have unstable operation, right...just to have something to do.

[isochar]

LOL, the time would be better spent on hardware tweaking/mods.

[rylan]

Given the option between DDR and Rambus, I'd pick DDR without a second thought... its superior in almost every way, and a lot cheaper.

Even more than that I'd go with an Athlon, since the P4 is kind of a joke anyway.

[dZeus]

Northwood seems to match the clock for clock speed of the paolomino in some situations, and it's clocked much higher... AMD will have some tough competition to fear if they can't switch at least partly to 0.13 micron within the next 3-6 months (is my guess).

[Paulr]

"Given the option between DDR and Rambus, I'd pick DDR without a second thought... its superior in almost every way, and a lot cheaper"

Then why doesn't the DDR based benchmarks against RAMBUS show this?

A lot cheaper is in the eye of the beholder, DDR RAM has been slowly raising in price over the past few weeks, there isn't a major difference in price now.

[Kosh Naranek]

Originally posted by rylan
Given the option between DDR and Rambus, I'd pick DDR without a second thought... its superior in almost every way, and a lot cheaper.

Even more than that I'd go with an Athlon, since the P4 is kind of a joke anyway.

A joke in what way ?

[Novdid]

FPU anyone? Games anyone? PRICE ANYONE???

The P4 is almost a joke compared to Athlon XP.

[[GDI]Raptor]

P4 sucks, my Athlon XP1900+ @ 2000+ beats it in almost every apps. and it costes about the half of a P4 2Ghz

And you dont need EXPENSIVE Rambus to get MAX preformance, I have 1024Mb 2100DDR, imagine the price of 2Gb RAMBUS......

845DDR, does perhaps help, well se when I get an test sample in at work, expect an ASUS P4B266

[Indiana]

Originally posted by Paulr
"Given the option between DDR and Rambus, I'd pick DDR without a second thought... its superior in almost every way, and a lot cheaper"

Then why doesn't the DDR based benchmarks against RAMBUS show this?

They do more than show this. Again: the incredible bandwidth provided by the Intel 850 chipset are due to IT HAVING DUAL CHANNELS and thus doubling the Rambus bandwidth.
So the crazy mem throughout you see on i850 based mobos is Intels achievement and not Rambus'. And the single channel DDR platforms already get a lot more than half the i850, besides having a much lower latency.

IF Intel produced a DUAL CHANNEL DDR266 platform, that one would put the i850 to shame.

[isochar]

But that's one of RDRAM's greatest advantages! It's easy *and* cheap to make a dual-channel configuration. Dual-channel DDR is harder to design/manufacture and will hence be more expensive.