getting more confused
read that a main determinant of performance is the "clock speed" (states that this
is not the same as operating frequency of the cpu (but is related)) and is a
function of the motherboard bus (however the only speeds on the motherboards seem to
be memory speeds...)
Sadly there are MANY factors that can improve performance, so we can't
just throw one number at them and have it explain everything.
The i925XE chipset does include some slightly better timings when it
comes to the memory controller, so it can very slightly reduce the
memory latency when compared to the i915. How much does this amount
to? Typically it's a question of a clock cycle or two here and there
and it works out to about 0-2% overall system performance.
For the extra $100 that the motherboards cost an average improvement
of only about 1% really isn't worth IMO.
(i guess they are slower ...)
Somewhat, though it's more a question of cost. In theory PCI-Express
is the One Bus to Unit Them All, which should reduce the cost. With
some older systems you could easily have 4 or 5 different buses for a
variety of different cards and connectors. Supporting extra buses
means more connectors, more wires, more transistors and just generally
more $$$. Dropping support for AGP cuts the costs of a fairly
expensive bus that can most easily be replaced. As such, it was one
of the first to hit the chopping block (ACR, CNR and CSA also aren't
likely to make the cut, but they were rather obscure to begin with and
can safely be ignored).
i would assume that if i bought a pci-express graphics card, the overall performance
would not be adversely affected (if it had been affected with the onBoard chip) ?
That is correct. I wouldn't sweat any performance loss due to the
on-board chip either, it's really quite minimal these days. 5 years
ago it was quite a different story, but these days the performance
difference is mostly lost in the noise (ie less than 2%).
yes, plan on sata / raid drive
Sounds like a good plan, though RAID can be a whole other can of
worms. My personally opinion on it is to stick with RAID-1
(mirroring) due to reliability concerns. I've seen just WAY too many
hard drives die to consider RAID-0 (stripping).
not related to l2 cache (better to get a cpu with the l2 cache *built in* (vs. on
the board))?
Similar idea, though you'll have a HELL of time finding any chip that
doesn't have L2 cache built-in. The last x86 chips I know of that
used external L2 cache were the original Athlon chips, discontinued in
late 2000, and these chips had their L2 in a little cartridge
alongside the processor, not on the system board.
All current processors have their L2 cache on-chip.
and the memory controller being on the chip, is this why the l2 cache and the total
system mem are less than p4's?
They are partly related, though it's a bit more complicated than that.
The integrated memory controller and lower memory latency time of the
Athlon64 mean that it's less dependant on getting data from it's L2
cache, so it can get by with less cache (or conversely, the higher
memory latency of the P4 means that it's more dependent on L2).
As for total system memory, there isn't much reason why that should
change one way or the other. Actually the Athlon64 supports MORE
memory than the P4 (8GB vs. 4GB), but in practical purposes the
difference doesn't amount to much.
there are 4 sockets...
this board supports either ddr or ddr2 (it states [under the specs] that it
supports dual, single (perhaps the ddr2 will not require dual?))
i'd be using ddr initially
also the max is 4 gb
From the specs I can see there are 4 DDR sockets and 2 DDR2 sockets on
this board. Both DDR and DDR2 are best used in a dual-channel setup,
though sometimes it is possible to use a single-channel setup with
about a 10% performance loss, ie not a very good setup.
Note that even though this board supports both DDR and DDR2, it almost
certainly does NOT support both at the same time, it's one or the
other.
not sure whether 2 ddr2 chips are enough?
(i also found that it supports 2*ddr2 OR up to 4*ddr)
Probably. DDR2 still hasn't really made a big impact on things and
likely isn't going to for a while yet. Personally I would mostly just
ignore the DDR2 for the time-being, it costs more but is no faster and
DDR will be widely available for a long time (in computer terms, ie
3-5 years) to come.
aren't these the ones that have the 1066 mhz front side bus speed?
if they are not, i could still get the i915g board.......
Nope, the only chips with the 1066MT/s bus speed are the P4 Extremely
Expensive Edition chips. The 600 series P4 chips have the same
800MT/s bus speeds as the older 500 series P4 chips before them. they
should work on most/all i915G boards. They definitely will work on
that Asus board you had mentioned earlier.
Ohh.. speaking of that board, the Asus P5GDC-V Deluxe (I think that
was the one you were thinking of?) does NOT support integrated video.
Even though it comes up under their i915G chipsets, it's actually
using the i915P chipset. I don't know if this is a flaw in their
website or just the way they have things setup, just a word of warning
though. It's rather confusing and I definitely missed this one the
first read through it.
