Thinking about jumping on the AMD Bandwagon

[citi]

Now that XP is out it has raised a few questions in my mind.

1.) Since XP likes more ram, (win98 had the problems with more ram (over 512mb) not PTLE). can we start upgrading to more ram. Mac users use like a gig of ram on their machines. Has anyone if any using more ram noticed a difference?

2.) Right now I am running a PIII 866 w 512mb ram. In the Fry's add today there is an :

Athlon XP 1700 with quantispeed architechure
FIC AN11 MB with Via KT266A Chipset
5 PCI, 1 ACR Slot
3 DIMMS for up to 3GB of DDR memory

139$

Does this seem like a deal? It seems like one to me. I am not as familiar with athlon but I have built all of my PCs. I checked the PT Performance post but I can't get a feel for my particular needs. I want to see a drastic improvement by upping the speed and going with DDR memory?

Thanks in advance

CiTi

[Bastiaan]

$139 ??????????

That's a very good deal.....

[citi]

That is what i thought...can you tell me the difference in quantispeed verses standard 266 mhz bussing? It says in the paper that it operates at 1467mhz. What does that mean? Is that because of the DDR memory?

[crs117]

The chip actually operates at the 1400 mhz speed, but to compensate for the mhz gap of the p4 chips they have rated it at the 1700 mhz speed. Trust me the actual 1400mhz athlon chip is much much faster then the p4 1900 chip (or higher) especially for pt.

That sounds like a great deal, i am running an athlon 800mhz and it runs pt great so you should be doing well with your purchase.

Christian

[citi]

Thanks Chris, It is going to be a long weekend! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Mark, Allen, or anyone. If I pick up 512 ddr is it really much faster than say 512mb of standard ram? I mean is 512ddr the equivalent of say 1024mb of stand ram? And also can I buy more than 512 now that we are on XP?

[crs117]

Citi,

You are thinking about it all wrong here. DDR stands for double data rate ram. So 512 megs are just like 512 megs of normal ram in terms of quantity. The difference lies in the speed. sdr ram (single data rate) works differentely. See sdr ram is accessed once per bus cycle meaning that if you are running 133mhz bus your ram is being accessed once per cycle and is running at 133 mhz. DDR ram accesess the ram 2 times per bus clock cycle (at the rising edge and falling edge of the clock pulse), so it runs at twice the bus speed. If your bus is running 133 then your ram is running at 266.

So its just faster. Unfortunately ddr ram is not quite as fast as RDRAM but...they are working not only on faster bus speeds (which means faster ram) but also quad clocked ram (QDR), but a new motherboard will be needed to use it.

As far as performance is concerned hook up as much ram as you want in win xp (ram is cheap), and get the ddr ram. It is faster then sdr, and its almost as cheap.

Christian

[citi]

O I [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

That helps alot...I am going to go to Frys later today. Thanks a lot. I will posts my results soon.