Pentium 4 DDR chipsets compared

[qubit]

Yup, you read that right. I was doing some googling and came across this blast from the past from December 2001 from The Tech Report.

It's fascinating to see how the technology is slower and more primitive, with different benchmarks used, but it's all still basically the same. A classic case of continuous rinse and repeat.

And I was a decade younger. Not only that, but I've been a computer enthusiast since 1980, when I was first introduced to them, as a kid. The 8-bit 6502 CPU back then was fascinating and I still have a couple of books on the architecture and the instruction set. Wow, how time flies.

Anyway, the article:

PROPER SUPPORT FOR DDR SDRAM on the Pentium 4 platform has been a long time coming, in part of because of Intel's long-standing fascination with Rambus, and in part because of a legal dispute between Intel and VIA. Now Intel's own DDR chipset for the Pentium 4 is upon us, so we're rounding up a bevy of Pentium 4 chipsets to see which one is fastest. Will it be Intel's Rambus-driven 850? VIA's newly revamped P4X266A? Or the dark horse with the big muscles, SiS's 645 with support for DDR333 memory? Read on to find out.

The Tech Report

 

[eidairaman1]

First PC

IBM Compatible AT (Built by someone) with Win 98 SE, 256MB PC 100 SDRam, Celeron 333 Slot 1 and built in Graphics, Audio, rockwell modem, 6 GB HD.

Second PC

P4 1.7GHz Williamette Core skt 423 400 FSB, ECS P4VXMS Motherboard, 512MB PC 133 SDRam, Hercules 3D Prophet 2 GTS Pro 64MB Vid, SB PCI 512 Sound card, 300 Watt Antec Powersupply, Antec SX830 Case

3rd PC

P4 2.4 Northwood Skt 478 533 FSB, ASUS P4S8X Motherboard, 2 GB PC 2700 DDR Mushkin, ATI AIW 9700 Pro, Same Case as above, Same Sound Card as above, 450 Watt L&C Inc Powersupply.

Laptop- Dell Inspiron 9100/ XPS Gen 1, P4 3.4 EE Gallatin (Northwood Extreme-800 FSB) Radeon M 9800 256MB (R420 Core) 2 GB PC 3200 DDR

4th PC

AMD Athlon XP 3200+/XP-M 2500+, MSI K7N2 Delta-L/DFI LP NF2 Ultra-B, 2GB PC 2700 Mushkin/ PC 3200 Crucial Ballistix/Mushkin Redline XP, ATI AIW 9800 Pro/Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 512MB,
SB X-Fi, 500 Watt Antec Neo HE.

5th PC
TBD...

 

[Suhidu]

Wow, that's not bad at all! I haven't come here lately, but had to see if anything had changed in the Rambus debacle (I'm about to upgrade). The price had been keeping me from the P IV, so this looks like just the right thing at the right time for my upgrade! I've been getting into emulation, and Project64 has been pegging my trusty PIII, ...and I was just about ready to bypass Intel this time around...
...but it's great to see a better option than PC133, yet less Rambus than RDRAM!


I agree with Alanzilla's comment:
"We're past the point where we wait on the machine for everyday stuff. They're all really f-ing fast."
The P IV brings us there, and FINALLY I got a good upgrade path.

INTEL FTW!!

 

[xBruce88x]

... list of PCs owned... ima have to come back to this one... lol

 

[SkullFox]

yeah time flies....

I had:

1st - 1990 - i486 (don't know the rest of specs);
2nd - 1995 - Pentium 150Mhz, 16MB (later upgraded to 32MB) Ram, 2GB HDD;
3rd - 2001 - Pentium 4 1600Mhz, 512MB Ram, 80GB HDD;
4th - 2005 - Pentium 4 HT 3000Mhz, 2Gb Ram, 250GB HDD;
5th - 2007 - Athlon 64 X2 4200+, DFI Lanparty SLI-DR, 4GB Ram, 500GB HDD;
6th - 2009 - Core 2 Duo E8400, Asus P5Q Pro, 4GB Ram, 250GB + 2x1TB HDDs;
7th - 2010 - Core 2 Quad Q9550, Asus P5Q Pro, 4GB Ram, 2 x Intel X25-M 80GB SSD in Raid0, 3 x 2TD HDD Samsung
8th - 2012 - (running in a couple of weeks) Core i5 2500K (will be upgraded to i7 Ivy Bridge 3770K), ASrock Fatal1ty Z68 Pro, 8GB Ram, 2 x Intel X25-M SSD in Raid0, 2 x 3Tb HDD, 2x2Tb HDD

Laptop - 2008 - Asus G2S, Core 2 Duo P7500 2.2Ghz, 4GB Ram, Intel X25-M 80GB SSD (Upgraded), Graphics 8800GT 512MB.

As for the graphics I used in the desktops I had a lot of them:

AGP
Riva TNT2
GeForce2 MX200
GeForce4 MX440 SE
GeForce FX 5200
Radeon 9600 Pro
GeForce 6600 GT

PCI-E
GeForce 7800 GTX
Radeon HD 3870
Radeon HD 4850 CF
Radeon HD 5850 CF
GeForce GTX 580

 

[enaher]

First PC

IBM Compatible AT (Built by someone) with Win 98 SE, 256MB PC 100 SDRam, Celeron 333 Slot 1 and built in Graphics, Audio, rockwell modem, 6 GB HD.

Second PC

P4 1.7GHz Williamette Core skt 423 400 FSB, ECS P4VXMS Motherboard, 512MB PC 133 SDRam, Hercules 3D Prophet 2 GTS Pro 64MB Vid, SB PCI 512 Sound card, 300 Watt Antec Powersupply, Antec SX830 Power Supply

3rd PC

P4 2.4 Northwood Skt 478 533 FSB, ASUS P4S8X Motherboard, 2 GB PC 2700 DDR Mushkin, ATI AIW 9700 Pro, Same Case as above, Same Sound Card as above, 450 Watt L&C Inc Powersupply.

Laptop- Dell Inspiron 9100/ XPS Gen 1, P4 3.4 EE Gallatin (Northwood Extreme-800 FSB) Radeon M 9800 256MB (R420 Core) 2 GB PC 3200 DDR

4th PC

AMD Athlon XP 3200+/XP-M 2500+, MSI K7N2 Delta-L/DFI LP NF2 Ultra-B, 2GB PC 2700 Mushkin/ PC 3200 Crucial Ballistix/Mushkin Redline XP, ATI AIW 9800 Pro/Sapphire Radeon x1950 Pro 512MB,
SB X-Fi, 500 Watt Antec Neo HE.

5th PC
TBD...

Thats one hell of a Laptop

 

[eidairaman1]

Thats one hell of a Laptop

I know thats what I use for anything anymore, I need to clean it though both physically and logically. Never overheated though due to the fans (3 fans) Mods I did were replaced the TIMs on the GPU and Chipset with Akasa Shinetsu (Had to stack them for the thickness needed) and replaced the TIM on the CPU with Antec Silver Compound, I also mixed AS5 with AS Epoxy and put tweak monster ramsinks on the gpu ram, and overclocked the gpu and ram to 459/416, WMP on Win 7 dont like it though...

Im really am intrigued by the APUs AMD has and may very well build a FM1 or FM2 machine

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

I cant believe youre still rocking an Athlon XP. Id smash the hell out of that thing out of frustration for how slow it is.

 

[eidairaman1]

I cant believe youre still rocking an Athlon XP. Id smash the hell out of that thing out of frustration for how slow it is.

Windows 7 is effin fast on it, I will eventually find a cherry XP 3200 or XP-M 2800 and overclock the hell out of them in a GA-NF2 or Abit KW7 Motherboard and 4 Gigs of ram as a toy

I will probably have a FM1, AM3, or FM2 Motherboard (Id really love to see a Dual CPU FX setup again though)

After seeing what I built for my Bro which was:

Phenom II X2 555 BE (Triple 5) Unlocked to 955 Status (Perfect Chip)
AsRock 970 Extreme 4 (Latest bios as of September)
8 Gigs GSkill 1600 MHz at 8-8-8-24
Sapphire Radeon 6770 (Had Cat 11.9- direct upgrade to 11.11/11.12 drivers without even a removal)
Antec Green 650W PSU
500 Gig Seagate Baracuda HD
Win 7 HP 64bit

That SOB boots in less than a minute and shuts down in less than a minute and opens apps on the fly. Too Bad He dont game with it though...

 

[qubit]

Windows 7 is effin fast on it

I'll second that, as I've got that CPU, too. It's really good on my P4 Northwood too (2.8GHz @ 3.5, HT, 800FSB, Abit AI7 mobo)

 

[eidairaman1]

I'll second that, as I've got that CPU, too. It's really good on my P4 Northwood too (2.8GHz @ 3.5, HT, 800FSB, Abit AI7 mobo)

Only thing that pissed me off is that NV dropped Driver support for NF2 on Vista, which in turn would of been the driver for 7 so there is no drivers for NF2 on Win 7 or Vista...

 

[silkstone]

First "PC" i had was an amstrad CPC 464 it was great, keyboard, tape deck, single buttoned 4-way joystick and of course a monitor. Elite was amazing on it

2nd pc was a family 465 dx2/66 then it was upgraded to a cyrix 100mhz.
after that i started building my own computers and built a 150mhz celeron or something.
The next upgrade was to a 333mhz celeron and finaly a duron which clocked in at around the 600mhz mark.

I came to Asia and gave up computers for about 5 years, being more interested in going out drinking and such (and also being poor)

about 3 years ago i got an E2200 which would overclock to arpund 3.5ghz if i remember correctly, then i got a Xeon E8400 equivalent. Last month i finally upgraded that to my current rig.

I can't really remember all the video cards i have had, but one that stands out was the TNT 2 MX or something which came with a pair of 3d glasses which was pretty cool for gaming although a little gimmicky.

 

[punani]

love how they test Q3 arena and Serious Sam with 640x480 32bit colour .

I was still running over people in Carmageddon on my 333 MHz computer with voodoo2 12MB graphics back then.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

After seeing what I built for my Bro which was:

Phenom II X2 555 BE (Triple 5) Unlocked to 955 Status (Perfect Chip)
AsRock 970 Extreme 4 (Latest bios as of September)
8 Gigs GSkill 1600 MHz at 8-8-8-24
Sapphire Radeon 6770 (Had Cat 11.9- direct upgrade to 11.11/11.12 drivers without even a removal)
Antec Green 650W PSU
500 Gig Seagate Baracuda HD
Win 7 HP 64bit

That SOB boots in less than a minute and shuts down in less than a minute and opens apps on the fly. Too Bad He dont game with it though...

Seems like a waste of money if he doesnt use that to game with.

I still think you should go with a core i5 seeing as how its faster than anything AMD has to offer right now. Just my $.02 though. Id rather shell out slightly more money for faster performance.

 

[eidairaman1]

Seems like a waste of money if he doesnt use that to game with.

I still think you should go with a core i5 seeing as how its faster than anything AMD has to offer right now. Just my $.02 though. Id rather shell out slightly more money for faster performance.

What Can I say- He wanted a Major Upgrade considering his old machine was almost 10 years old. I got a full fleged Quad core for less than the quad core prices run. It does everything he asked for plus has room for upgrade to 32 GB Ram and a Faster CPU/ Video card without changing the motherboard out. Only thing i told him is to not leave it on when he isnt home due to where he lives.

ATM of time I will not have upgrades till FM2 comes about (Which i hope is what combines both FM1 and AM3+ in desktop market). What I really want to see is dual CPU setup again actually. Yall may consider it excess but the machine will last several and i mean several builds before upgrading again.

Reason i keep the old equipment around is so i can play around with it and see what it can do despite being limited resource wise...

My laptop definitly needs a cleaning- dust/dirt/food, and OS wipe.