Tbird w/ DDR lockups

[Guest]

I've read somewhere that some folks have run into random system lockups when they pair thier tbird with ddr ram. Has anyone here had that problem? I am going to be building a new system in the next couple of weeks, and am not yet decided with proc to use. This issue could influence my decision. Feel free to make suggestions.

There are two theories to arguing with women........neither of which work.

 

[Raystonn]

I haven't heard anything about this, but I'm not an expert on Athlons. If you wait 5 days (until April 29th) you will see drastic price cuts for the Pentium 4 lineup. PC800 RDRAM is also currently cheaper than PC2100 CAS2 DDR.

From a price perspective, you will save money going with the Pentium 4 system if you're going for the best components all around. However, if you're willing to live with slower components, such as higher CAS DDR or SDRAM, the Athlons end up cheaper. For a motherboard with a decent chipset you'll find that P4 motherboards are about $10 more than decent DDR Athlon chipsets. The P4 1.7GHz will have its price dropped to about $350, the P4 1.5GHz to about $256 or so, and the P4 1.4GHz to $193 (in units of 1000, as sold to all retailers.) Http://www.pricewatch.com shows a best price of $216 plus tax/shipping for the Athlon 1.33GHz currently.

Recommendations differ depending on your planned usage of the system and how soon you plan on upgrading after this purchase. The Pentium 4 is the best long term solution because as software becomes more optimized for it, it will only increase in performance. (It's important to take obscolescence into account.) The P3 and Athlon will only get worse as time goes on. If you plan on upgrading every 6 months like the power users around here, then you would probably want an Athlon.

-Raystonn

-- The center of your digital world --

 

[Guest]

As much as I prefer AMD (solely because of price/performance ratio). I would not recommend getting a DDR platform for it. Why? It is my opinion that the DDR platform in general, meaning for both Intel and AMD, needs to mature a bit before it can be implemented in such a way as to maximise it potential. Right now, if you're thinking of going AMD, go with a KT133A board, this chipset is very nice from my experence, a good board is the A7V-133. Otherwise, if you're going Intel, go with an Intel chipset, i815E(P) seems to do quite well. Please note that the above is my $0.02. Good luck in you decision, but if you are in Victoria BC, buy from me!... ;-)

--
Free us from these chains, let us slip these bonds and touch the sky with our imagination.

 

[Guest]

Thats the way I'm leaning. I've always built Intel systems because I didn't feel like screwing around with compatibility issues. I'm planning on spending about $3000, I usually build a new system every 2 or 3 years or so. Everybody seems to be making an issue over p4 being overpriced, but looks to me like now its not. Oh yeah, I think I read that in PC gamer or maximum pc.

There are two theories to arguing with women........neither of which work.

 

[Tempus]

compatiblilty issues? that is a stinkin myth. Sure there are a few programs that may only run on Intels, but the same goes for AMD. You want a P4? Go ahead and get one. I'm tired of talking every single person in this forum out of getting one. My opinion? Get some balls and get an Athlon. As for the P4 price cuts, I've yet to see a single one at those prices anywhere. Someone even said that a 1.7GHz was $999 at Fry's. Sheesh.

- Tempus fugit donec vestrum relictus tripudium. Autem amor praeterea magis pretium.

 

[Guest]

This is a list of components I'm leaning toward:
Asus P4T? or athlon 1.3
P4 1.5? or asus A7M266
256mb ram
Enlight Case
Plextor 16x10x40 cdrw
Sigma Decoder
16x pioneer dvd
IBM 75gb HD
Optiquest q95 19"
soundblaster Live x-gamer
klipsch Promedia 4.1 speakers
asus v8200 geforce 3 ultra 64mb

Let me know if you have suggestions!

There are two theories to arguing with women........neither of which work.

 

[Raystonn]

"a new system every 2 or 3 years or so"

Then I definately recommend a Pentium 4 system. Anyone who tries to tell you that P4 optimized code won't become mainstream in that time is trying to sell you something (an Athlon from their webstore perhaps.)

You can get an excellent 1.7GHz P4 system for less than the $3000 you are looking to spend. Grab 2 128MB RDRAM modules for $101 each, an excellent P4 motherboard for $170, the P4 1.7GHz itself for just over $350 in a few days, a GeForce 2 GTS Ultra 64MB for $288, a case w/power supply, keyboard, mouse, an 80.0GB 7200RPM Western Digital hard drive for $299, add in a cdrw and dvdrom...

That's $959 plus the price of the case, keyboard, and mouse (all cheap), optional cdrw and dvdrom (price depends on what you want), and the price of a monitor. I don't think you're going to even spend half of what you've allotted. Check prices here: www.pricewatch.com

-Raystonn

-- The center of your digital world --

 

[Raystonn]

"As for the P4 price cuts, I've yet to see a single one at those prices anywhere."

Well yeah, the prices get cut on the 29th.

-Raystonn

-- The center of your digital world --

 

[Kelledin]

DDR lockups? I have a DDR system and have yet to experience a lockup.

Of course, I took the time to check every motherboard setting against the manual and make sure it was correct before I even started. I changed one jumper to set the motherboard to expect registered DIMMs insteat of unregistered (my memory i sregistered). Had I neglected to make this setting, I could easily see it causing system lockups. This motherboard was a Gigabyte GA-7DX.

I've heard the Asus A7M266 was also shipping with a misconfigured jumper at one time--it was jumpered for non-standard DDR voltage. One review site discovered this in their sample and had to change the jumper back to standard voltage to get a stable system.

Based on that, I suspect any "lockups" you hear of are probably due to people not configuring their motherboards properly. Some of the settings are rather esoteric to most (ever heard of I2C/SMbus?) or at the least, less than obvious.

Right now, DDR is not worth the cost unless you want the very best performance out of your system. It currently gets no more than a 4% benefit over cheaper KT133A-based solutions.

Kelledin

bash-2.04$ kill -9 1
init: Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?