pentium 4 machine

[d3ano]

Right, next weekend i am going to build my gaming rig.
I have decided to go for a new P4 3GHzC chip, 512MBSDRAM3200 and a meaty ATI9800 AGP Card. Only thing that i am not sure on now is the motherboard.
I was after a board withan 875chipset, but i have been told that a 865 is quicker as it doesn't have and "ECC" checking onboard???
Can anyone recommend the best board for the CPU that i have; it needs to have an 800Mhz FSB.

Thanks

[luca brazzi]

Any of the latest Gigabyte boards.

BIG NOTE: sounds daft I know, but make sure you put the heatsink fan on pointing in the 'right' direction. The noise difference is HUGE. Something about which end the wires face.

[annodomini2]

have look on www.firingsquad.com they compare motherboards and their performance, should give you idea.

[d3ano]

luca brazzi said:

Any of the latest Gigabyte boards. BIG NOTE: sounds daft I know, but make sure you put the heatsink fan on pointing in the 'right' direction. The noise difference is HUGE. Something about which end the wires face.

Have you had a good experiance with the Gigabyte boards then.
Thanks for the tip Luca

[plotloss]

Gigabyte would be my recommendation for Mobos as well.

P4 though, I'd swerve that like the plauge, AMD are FAR superior for entertainment titles.

[d3ano]

plotloss said:

P4 though, I'd swerve that like the plauge, AMD are FAR superior for entertainment titles.

Why's that Plotless? Is that personal preferance or is there a sound reason why?

[plotloss]

P4 is a business optimised chip and the Athlon XP is media optimised.

There are deep technical reasons which can be found over at www.tomshardware.com

Basically its to do with the pipe size for media apps and how the processor palms the work off onto the VGA card.

AMD have been kicking the shit out of similar power P4 chips since the P3's launch on a typical home useage machine.

If you are using a lot of MS stuff, like Excel or Word I would say P4 but for entertainment then its got to be AMD IMHO.

[luca brazzi]

I got a Gigabyte board a couple of months back to home my 3.06 P4. The board layout is excellent, manual is clear, easy to understand, stuff is easy to connect on the board, always get the HIGH QUALITY statement in the reviews. Plus the board I got supported hyperthreading, which I thought I should get as the chip is of that type. Not sure how much use it is at present, maybe have to wait for new software to show its benefits.

I'll have a look at the way my CPU fan is connected and let you know if you're interested. Its in the instructions, but I ignored that bit thinking what a load of nonsense.....oh how wrong I was.

Not sure if its the case now, but AMD generate A LOT more heat than then Intel CPUs, although they give much more performance per £. I was flush at the time, so bought the fastest there was.

LB

[docevi1]

Asus boards are nifty as well, the N8 something was getting great reviews.

AMD chips run harder (more calculations per cycle compared to Pentiums) hence why they started that daft naming cycle of 2000XP when really it is a 1.55Gig chip

Stefan

[d3ano]

The AMD chips don't have Hyper-Threading though....do they??

[plotloss]

d3ano said:

The AMD chips don't have Hyper-Threading though....do they??

They have the same thing probably, its just called something else...

[pdV6]

docevi1 said:

Asus boards are nifty as well, the N8 something was getting great reviews. AMD chips run harder (more calculations per cycle compared to Pentiums) hence why they started that daft naming cycle of 2000XP when really it is a 1.55Gig chip Stefan

IIRC the naming convention of, say, an Athlon XP 2000+ means that the chip performs better than the equivalnet previous generation (non-XP, Thunderbird?) chip running at 2GHz. Additionally, the old generation Athlons performed better MHz for MHz than the equivalent Pentium chips.

So, an Athlon XP 2000+ ought to be a fair bit quicker than a 2Ghz Pentium, even though its 'only' running at 1.5Ghz or so.

[squirrelz]

They don't have hyperthreading (HT), but it makes very little difference in gaming from what I can tell.



The GFX card is what really matters.

>> Edited by squirrelz on Tuesday 5th August 14:21

[Robertuk]

Hi,

Sometimes with different motherboards & features improvements are hardly noticeable.

Have a look at
http://www17.tomshardware.com/howto/20010725/bios_tuning-12.html
I quote "possible to boost performance by a whole 1 percent by disabling the "ECC Checking" switch in the BIOS." .

Years ago small changes meant we would see a difference. Computers are so fast now that a couple of extra frames here and there wont mean much !

If your task is computational (business /academic /scientific) then processor grunt is important. If one computer can be improved by 5 % and your network has 50 workstations , thats a 250% improvement. Your getting two and half machines worth of computing for free !

An AMD or P4 is fine for both gaming and Office work.
You cannot tell the difference in Word /Excel /Office applications.

With gaming I would invest in :

A good monitor (maybe a two/three screen setup for F1 racing). Its what your staring at and they are cheap now !

A v.good video card (as mentioned )

An Audigy snd card and hi-fi (for the best sound quality and to feel the effects).

The other trouble with brand new motherboards can be issues which require bios updates.
These can take awhile.

Good Luck.

[mashie]

plotloss said:

d3ano said: The AMD chips don't have Hyper-Threading though....do they?? They have the same thing probably, its just called something else...

Sorry plotloss but in this matter you are completely wrong.
AMD has nothing that even resemble Hyper-Threading (two logical CPUs in one physical).

As for your earlier statement that the bandwidth from CPU to VGA is better is plain wrong. A P4C has a FSB/memory bandwidth of 6.4GB/s while the best AMD can offer is 3.2GB/s.

The only thing the AMD is better at is IPC (instructions per clock). It is due to this that AMD had to invent the XP rating (XP1800 = 1.53GHz and so on). Now if AMD could reach the same frequenzy as Intel they would be superior, unfortunately for them they can't...

As for the original question regarding suitable P4C mobo, you might consider the MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R (Intel 875P) review

[mashie]

d3ano said:

I have decided to go for a new P4 3GHzC chip, 512MBSDRAM3200 and a meaty ATI9800 AGP Card.

Just remember that you need two 256MB sticks if you want to take advantage of the extra memory bandwidth offered by dual channel mobos such as both 865/875

[rich-uk]

Have a look here: www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1203439,00.asp

[d3ano]

thanks Mashie. I have decided to go for te MSI board as it seem that its the dog ollocks in boards.
As you said in a thread i need 2x 256sticks of ram. can this can take the 3700(i am assuming this is the fastest ram on the market) stuff and would it make use of that extra bandwith, i wans't too sure on reading the write up.

D3

[mashie]

The faster mem you get the better since you can squeeze it to the last MHz with that mobo.

[d3ano]

Do you know what manufacture makes the faster RAM?
I know that Crucial is the cheapest, but its not the fastest.
And what is the fastest speed for RAM?

If i am going to build a games rig i want everything perfect for at least a week.

Thanks