Question about intel P4

[tyronemoss]

why are there limitations on the chipsets? for example only 1.5 gigs PC 1066. why can't there just be 2 gigs PC 1066??.. and how much faster is PC1066 is compared to PC800?? also how much faster is 72000 rpm than 54000 rpm on a harddrive?

[TheWizard]

I don't know the difference between PC800 and PC1066, to be quite frank, I'm more of a DDR man myself. That RAMBUS stuff is icky.

As for the hard drives, there is a noticeble difference between 5400 and 7200 RPM. If you have a choice, go for 7200.

[sonyman]

The access time of a 7200 rpm HDD is roughly half of that of a 5400 rpm.

-Scott

[tyronemoss]

what about PC800 and PC1066

[sonyman]

If you are using a Penitum 4 with a 533MHz FSB, then you will be able to achieve roughly 33% more performance when using PC1066 over PC800.

-Scott

[tyronemoss]

ok thanks
what about PC1066 aompared to PC1200

[blakerwry]

The access time of a 7200 rpm HDD is roughly half of that of a 5400 rpm.

-Scott

Have to but in here. But your statement is incorrect. Seek times on 5400RPM drives are, on average, the same as 7200 drives...same goes for older 4400 RPM drives.

Access times are reduced because the rotational delay is lower.. on a 7200rpm disk the rotational delay is ~4.2 ms, on a 5400RPM it's ~5ms.

with seek times being roughly 9ms, the access time difference between 7200RPM and 5400RPM drives is ~6%.(which doesn't equate to a direct 6% performance boost in desktop use) 13.2ms is obviously not half of 14ms.


What probably matters more is getting a high platter density. Getting 20Gb platters vs getting 60GB platters(such as the WD 2000JB, 1200BB/JB, 60 and 120GB Seagate ATA V's, and IBM 180GXP) is going to make roughly a 62% increase in performance in a typical desktop senerio. This is because the higher density of the 60gb/platter drives offer nearly 3 times the transfer rates of a 20GB/platter drive.

It should also be noted that the real reason for getting a 7200RPM drive in desktop use is because of the higher transfer rates you can achieve with the same density disks... going to 7200RPM will give you an ~33% increase in transfer rates. This is aproximately the same performance boost you get by going from 20GB to 33GB platters.

20GB/platter drives are definately on the way out, but there are still some around... most IDE drives you will see are using 33, 40, or 60Gb platters. Knowing which ones are which will give you a good performance boost(probably about as much as going to a drive that uses an 8bm cache as opposed to a 2mb one)

My advice to you is to get the drive with the largest buffer and platter density in your price range that meets your capacity requirements. For most people in this forum I would guess this would be the Western digital 800JB, 1000JB, 1200JB and IBM 180GXP in 60/120GB.

[tyronemoss]

wow.. so what about the memory??
PC1066 vs PC1200

[BuddhaTB]

wow.. so what about the memory??
PC1066 vs PC1200

There will be no noticeable difference between the two.

[tyronemoss]

so is it much of a difference between PC800 and PC1066?
and how much is it

[glock20rocks]

Forgot about RD-RAM, Intel's dropping it in favor of dual-channel DDR.
They are using DDR266 right now (about equal to PC1066), and will switch to an 800MHz FSB (dual DDR400) sometime next year. PC1200 is not supported by any Intel chip; you'd have to overclock the FSB to see any performance gains.

As stated before, PC1066 is about 33% faster than PC800, but only if you've got a Pentium 4 with a 533MHz FSB. The older ones use a 400MHz FSB.

[S_Colt45]

wow something else I didn't know before but now do! I didn't know that platter size is something you have to be aware of, I was thinking about getting a Seagate 80 gig but going by what blakerwry said I suppose it would be better getting one of them WD 120 gig drives then?

I looks like the performance over the smaller platter size is pretty big
so I guess I'll have to wait and get a WD instead.
As allways the smart guys at the forums have helped me from making a purchasing mistake

thanks again
Steve

[hoxlund]

the intel boards that support dual channel ddr ram is the new granite bay chipset mobos, better known as E7205

and also it includes agp 8x, which in itself it useless right now, nothing hardly touches agp 4x speeds

if your looking to build a new p4 system don't even look at any mobo's with the sis or via chipsets, there are way behind as far as tech, stabality

also the new granite bay chipset mobos, might never see the light of day, go to this post to find out why...

http://www.motherboards.org/forums/view ... ight=e7205

[Matt]

When it comes to DDR memory, the PC# is referring to the bandwidth in Gbyte/sec: IE: PC1600, PC2100, PC2700, PC3200, are 1.6, 2.1, 2.7, 3.2 Gbyte/sec. For example:

PC2100 memory is 64bit which can do 8bytes per clock, which is a stick of memory running at 133 that transmits data twice per clock. So 266mhz effective x 8bytes = 2128mb/sec or rounded off 2.1Gbytes/sec.


Then there is rambus or RDRAM where the PC # refers to the speed in mhz.

PC800 = "800mhz" its dual channel 100mhz memory that transmits data 4 times per clock, so its effectively 400mhz, but there are 2 channels of it which means the memory is operating in sych for a total of 800mhz. Each channel is 32bits wide which means it can do 4bytes of data per clock and at 800 clocks per second, the 800mhz rdram can do 3.2gb/sec.

PC1066 = "1066mhz" is the same as above except 133 mhz memory transmitting 4 times per clock for a total of 533mhz with dual channels which comes out to be 1066mhz worth of bandwidth. The same 32bits here again, 4bytes per clock comes out to 4.2gb/sec bandwidth.

[Matt]

the intel boards that support dual channel ddr ram is the new granite bay chipset mobos, better known as E7205

and also it includes agp 8x, which in itself it useless right now, nothing hardly touches agp 4x speeds...

Yea these boards are hard core.. i wanna gets me one

And fyi to the original topic poster, these are 166mhz boards 8bytes wide, transit twice per clock, for a grand total of 2.7ish Gbyte/sec x 2 channels for 5.3gb bandwidth... SWEET