hardware ?

jbone · Post by **jbone** » Tue Aug 06, 2002 6:57 pm

"SiS is throwing its support behind RDRAM."

Considering the actual product history of SiS, this statement made by PCWorld is completely incorrect.

Hyped-up and inaccurate headlines like that are what make me avoid PCWorld as a source of reliable computer information.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Aug 06, 2002 7:15 pm

Well the P4 does work best with RAMBUS and it does get a mighty big speed increase when using a 533Mhz bus w/1066RDRAM......

I'd get it if it weren't so damn exspensive. Of course having a job would help too

.

I wouldn't really call that "full support", Iam SiS is still going to support their already released DDR P4 chipset

.

I mean if they said they weren't going to produce any more Athlon chipsets and stopped producing a DDR/SDR version of the P4 chipsets, then I'd call that "full support".

I think SiS is playing a smart move what with the performance gains seen when using the 533Mhz bus w/1066 RDRAM. It'll get those hardcore geeks going...

~klinky

Shulocc · Post by **Shulocc** » Tue Aug 06, 2002 7:25 pm

I was real glad to SiS sticking it's neck out and trying to corner a new market with an old school approach. I still have an SiS board with a 350AMD. It still runs pretty smoothly and I have never had the problems out of it as I have the latest Abit I bought. I still can't get the audio to function properly but the RAID works fine.......so far. Not to mention the fact my PC got real buggy after I added another mem stick. Oh yeah and the 2 extra USB ports don't work either.

You're right PCWorld does suck when it comes to rating equipment, components, ect, ect. I think they let idiots that have never used a computer write the reviews.

I can't figure out why they didn't stick with AMD though??? Those high-end Pentiums run like the old 333Celerons they released in 98. It was like buying a Ferrari with a 4 cylinder.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Aug 06, 2002 7:44 pm

Hey man, Abit is a motherboard manufactuer, not a chipset designer.

It looks like Abit sticks with Via for current AMD chipsets and Intel for well Intel's current chipsets.

As for the P4, it's not that horrid. It just gets whooped at the same clock speed by a Athlon XP, the thing about the P4 though is that is has insane head room to grow with. The Athlon is starting to mold and is having trouble breaking the 2Ghz barrier. Currently I would say that a 2.53Ghz P4 would outperform the current 1.8Ghz Athlon XP. But the question is "is it worth it?". What with a P4 2.53Ghz CPU costing $508 and a Athlon XP 1.8Ghz being a meger $200, and the fact that the Pentium 4 <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.ht ... 15">barely beats</a> the Athlon in most tests, I think the wiser person would go for the Athlon.

~klinky

Shulocc · Post by **Shulocc** » Tue Aug 06, 2002 8:16 pm

I'm just referring to SiS products in general. The company I work for still has several machines with SiS chipsets or full motherboards with built in sound, video, and modem. No problems from these machines whatsoever.

AMD vrs Pentium

Hmmm....
I just built my boss a PC with a Pentium 4 2.5. I built it at home and was really shocked by the performance differences. I could put it on the LAN and try both out at the same time and noticed a little difference in some areas and huge in others. Mainly OS browsing was the shocker. WindowsXP ran incredibly smooth with the AMD1800XP and was somewhat (maybe a few noticable milliseconds) faster than the Pentium. May not sound like much but when you use your machine for something other than video editing it can make a huge difference.

Pentiums are nice for the average consumer.
Big numbers + huge price = damn fine product
Which we all know is completely wrong when buying anything. But not the average person. Pentiums are real good to use for a server whereas AMD is ideal for a workstation.

Now the RAMBUS issue. Didn't someone already try this and fail miserably?

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Aug 06, 2002 9:40 pm

Well the Pentium4 was designed for RAMBUS. Intel was going full speed ahead and was going to try and get everyone to switch over to it. Somethings came up which made intel change their minds.

A)Rambus was costly.
B)Despite having amazing bandwidth available, Rambus gets bottlenecked thanks to some of it's technical aspects. One major flaw I see is that the more RIMMS you add to the machine, the slower it goes.
C)DDR was out and making headway and was cheaper.
D)Rambus started suing everyone over royalties for patents on DDR tech that they say they owned. The idea was to make money one way or another, either with their crappy RDRAM or via milking memory manufactuers. A judge later ruled against Rambus as they withheld information during JEDEC standardization meetings, way back in the early '90s.

So Rambus, is painted as a evil company with a exspensive piece of crappy hardware...... Which is the reason it most likely will fail.

However, since the P4 was designed for RDRAM, it will run better with it.

~klinky

Mechaman · Post by **Mechaman** » Wed Aug 07, 2002 12:25 am

It's more like "After Intel had sunk a hefty portion of R-n-D money and prestige into Rambus, the marketing staff figured they'd better damn well do something with it".
The Tualatin P3 cores(or the P3-S) are fairly innovative for that generation, and if Intel had continued along that lines we might have had a different track route to 64-bit.
Unfortunately, the same marketing staff keeps the Tualatin prices artificially high so that people are more drawn to the P4, rather than encourage cheap dual-proc machines built around P3-Ss. The here-again-gone-again reliability of the cheap VIA chipsets don't help.

Shulocc · Post by **Shulocc** » Wed Aug 07, 2002 7:33 pm

I wanna see one run now.

Klinky you are a virtual plethora of knowledge. Do you ever post at motherboard.com?