Need Memory suggestions:

Ordering new MoBo and P4 and need suggestion on which memory to buy. The mobo has 2 sdram and 2 DDR slots, what kind of ddr ram does a P4 take and what does the gang suggest??

Thx

 

Go to www.crucial.com and plug in your motherboard. Order 256MB of whatever crucial tells you. Only way to fly!
Will be about 75.00

 

Thanks Scott...........I will, and I noticed that they have free 2nd day shipping.

 

I'd still like to know what or which DDR to use for a P4 and if that would be faster. They list pc1600 and pc2100 DDR at 266 fsb as a option and the cost id close to the same.

Hummm, i thought (for some reason) that P4 had a 400 fsb....??

 

Hi ossa,
The designation of pc1600 & pc2100 refer to max data transfer, i.e. pc1600=1.6GB/s data transfer rate. The reference to 266Mhz fsb is effective bus speed. AMD's Athlons use the Alpha EV6 architecture which allows data transfer on the rise and fall of the signal (sine wave). Whereas all earlier processors from AMD and Intel only moved data once during that cycle. Therefore, an Athlon that normally runs on a 133Mhz fsb has an effective data transfer of a 266Mhz fsb (133x2=266Mhz).

Your P4 Northwood (it is a Northwood and not a Willamette right) which has a 400Mhz rating is essentially the same. It's an "effective rating ". The cpu actually runs on a 100Mhz fsb but when coupled with RDRAM which works on the basis of (4) channels the data moved in one cycle is equivilant to a 400Mhz bus.

Since your P4 runs on a 100Mhz bus you will not see any advantage using memory capable of 133Mhz. The best you can expect would be 100x2=200Mhz, unless you choose to overclock the cpu.

Tin

 

Two corrections to my previous post.

Funny how you can be doing something completely unrelated and suddenly realize a mistake. Occured yesterday on the way home from work. It's as if it took my brain several days to process the info and give me the results.

Anyway, your cpu does run on a 100Mhz fsb but you can use 133Mhz memory (which you probably have figured out). The memory bus runs at 100 or 133 determined by the speed of the memory you've installed. PC133 sdram would yield an effective bus speed of 133x2=266Mhz.

Secondly, the refernce to Northwood/Willamette. Couldn't be a Northwood because the slowest speed available is 1.6GHz.

Sorry for the confusion,
Tin