"Ðavïd" said:
Paul wrote...
I like your assessment. I'm also mulling through the Asus P4
motherboards as I don't need every cutting edge bell & whistle.
I'm looking at P5GD2 Deluxe with at least a P4 3.0 GHz 800MHz FSB
and a 256MB PCIe video card. What do you think? Go for it or consider
another board.
Davïd
Greenville, NC
Obviously, my two test cases were biased. I could have constructed
a more cost effective solution with the P5AD2-E if I put my mind to
it. The increment for the P5xxx family doesn't have to be that
extreme.
I think the purpose of the whole exercise, was to highlight how
Intel, with all their "technology push", forgot there was an
actual customer to impress, with all this stuff. In the fullness
of time, the P5AD2 may have some upgrade options for hardware,
that will leave the P4C800-E and other 875/865 boards in the
dust. But not currently. Is the difference between a 3.4Ghz
S478 processor and a 3.8GHz S775 worth $1K ? Only if the
processor is busy 100% CPU for 24 hours a day/ seven days a
week.
Dual cores holds no excitement for me. I don't own any software
that can use them, and don't plan on buying any such software
either.
Something I found mildly shocking in this exercise, was that
when I looked at some of the PCI-E video cards, they seemed to
be using core or memory clock rates that were slightly inferior
to their AGP counterparts. Why the hell would someone want to pay
more money for a slightly slower card ? Until I started reading
some ad copy, I didn't realize the cards weren't exactly the same.
PCI-E x16 is too much bandwidth for current generation cards, so
serves no useful purpose right now. And considering the thermal
characteristics of the video cards right now, we may not see much
in the way of progress on video cards as they are currently
architected. (It is too soon for general availability of 65nm
silicon.) If an SLI based solution sucks down 300W of wall power
to run, I would say that is the end of the line for further
performance advancement on the video card front.
The whole purpose of the LGA775 socket change, was to put
more power and ground pins on the processor socket. To solve
Intel's power problem with the Prescott. The socket change
didn't advance the state of the art, by providing a wider or
better front side bus. Even though Intel controls both chipsets
and processors, all they could come up with on this round of
technology, was more power pins. (And, even though they
introduced FSB1066, there is only one expensive processor
that can use it.)
Don't get me wrong - if you look at the benchmarks, there
are still reasons to own an Intel platform. If it wasn't
for Intel discontinuing the S478 socket chips, we could still
be getting very close to the same performance, for less money.
The question is, whether it is worth the extra money, for a
performance boost you could also get by overclocking an
older platform.
As for your question about the P5GD2 - based on a less biased
analysis, I guess going with an LGA775 platform, you are
only being "dinged" for extra money for the DDR2 memory. I
would look very carefully at the video card issues, and specs
for the AGP and PCI-E versions of the cards, to see if you
are getting screwed too bad on the video card. The 6800U for
AGP and PCI-E were $489 and $650, and that is cash you could
be keeping in your pocket if you went with the AGP solution.
Perhaps ATI has a more rational pricing strategy ? (I wouldn't
bet on it.)
What you choose will have a lot to do with your upgrade
practices. If you hold onto a motherboard for a long time
(three years), then buying an S478 board would be a mistake
right now. If you buy a board per year, in a year's time there
might be a more compelling S775 solution to buy, in which case
S478 might be good enough right now. If you look at how AMD
is thinking right now, technology obsolescence in processor
technology is accelerating, to the point that again, the
customer is being left behind. (I think an article
I saw late last year, talked about S754 going away - already.
I guess with only S939 left, they'll have to introduce
something else.)
It should be obvious, that the product plans of all these
companies, don't have anything to do with the home builder
or the computer owner who wants an upgradeable computer.
These product plans were designed for the Dell's of the
world. Mountains of disposible computers, to fill the
landfill sites. Only the motherboard makers have an interest
in keeping us happy, but without the right technologies to
make it happen, they too will fade away. (Motherboard makers
can only package what they are given, as the motherboard
maker adds little of value to all the components used. Drivers
and chips are made by the chip companies.)
Intel's next introduction could well be FB (fully buffered)
memory. When that happens, DDR2 could be an orphan, even before
AMD has had time to make a DDR2 processor. As long as there
isn't a faster uniprocessor solution to be had from all this,
think of the computer you buy today, being the last computer
you will ever buy
Maybe you'll be keeping the same LGA775
processor and only buying new video cards every year ? Until
PCI-E x16 is no longer enough.
Paul
