Abit TH7II now a good low cost option ?

[Tom]

The price on the Abit TH7II has been going down lately, currently it's $116 at Newegg, which means it's in the same price range as many DDR boards. As far as I've been able to discern it also has possibly the best overclocking features of all the rdram boards.

It has one significant shortcoming, the DCRGs, memory clock devices, are not designed for higher than PC800 rdram. There are lots of users who report success running at PC1066 or even higher, but unless you replace the DCRGs it's a bit of a crapshoot.

But I'm wondering if maybe it's still a bargain, even if you get one that will only run with PC800? Combined with a P4 1.6a that will run at 150FSB, and using the 3x memory setting this would work out to a 2.4gig processor and PC800(edit-wrong,see below) rdram which I believe might be close in performance to a DDR board running at the same 150FSB and running DDR400 memory with a 3:4 divider.

And I believe the rdram memory is actually a little cheaper than the premium DDR needed to run at DDR400.

Any comments ? especially as to the relative performance of the two systems I outlined.

edit-also I'm not very familiar with rdram systems, so I don't know if I calculated things correctly.

edit2- after doing a little research I think the correct rdram speed in my scenario woyld be PC900, which would be a bit faster but raises a new question, since this is an easier number for the DCRGs to have to reach perhaps a greater percentage of TH7IIs could do this even if they couldn't run at PC1066. Any thoughts ?

 

[Mark0999]

At this point in time it's worth your while to look at the 845E, 845G or 850E boards.

 

[Tom]

Ok,
TH7II..$104 (Bunta.com)
2 128m Samsung PC800 rdrams..$33 each=$66 (Bunta.com)
P4 1.6A..$136 (Newegg)

TOTAL= $306

overclock to 150FSB, use 3x multiplier you end up with
2.4 gig at 150FSB
256 megs of rdram memory PC900
performance ??

Staying within the realm of easy overclocking, what i850e combo would be in this range of performance and price ? Or even lower price and better performance ?

I know there are DDR options for similar or better prices, I wonder what speed DDR would be similar in performance to PC900 ? I'm thinking that somewhere between DDR333-DDR400 that DDR would be faster, but I'd like opinions about that.

 

[jaybee]

Parrot:

I have been thinking about the TH7II but I think there will be an issue with the PCI speed. I'm not sure what the dividers are, but I think 1/4 is as low as you can go. If you run fsb=150, that means pci=37.5 and that could be a problem. Also, if you're not going above 150fsb, why not look at the Asus boards?

jaybee

 

[Tom]

The TH7II has an agp/pci lock which locks the pci at 33 and the agp at 66, no matter what FSB you use.

That feature and the FSB range up to 200FSB is why the TH7II is very popular with extreme overclockers.

 

[jaybee]

Parrot:

Thanks for the reply. I actually have seen the AGP lock feature but wasn't clever enough to figure out that means PCI lock too. Anyway, I have been jealously checking out 3dmark scores and thinking about the TH7II again. There is a good thread on overclocking TH7IIs http://discuss.madonion.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=techmobocpu&Number=823880&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1.

jaybee

 

[PowerEngineer]

Parrot, I agree the TH7II is a tempting choice -- particularly now that it's price has dropped. In light of the fact that Abit isn't planning to offer a I850E board, I wish they would throw us a bone by upgrading the DRSGs from the ICS-*-03s to the ICS-*-13s (which I understand are the DRSGs used on the P4T533-C). If they did, then there'd be no question in my mind that the TH7II would be the way to go. I'm a little worried, however, that the price drop may mean that Abit is preparing to drop the TH7II. Even with the -03s, a lot of people do manage to reach 133Mhz with a P4A 1.6 or 1.8 without resorting to the memory divider. And some people have even replaced their DRSGs with better TI chips. If you haven't read through the threads on overclockers.com, take a look; there's a lot of good information!

 

[Tom]

I agree with you. I wonder if Abit is reluctant to just upgrade the DCRGs on the TH7II because of worries about the number of warranty claims they would have to deal with. If it had the -13 DCRGs it would be the best choice for sure.

I think the odds are pretty good that the TH7II with the -03 will work at PC1066, but its still a risky gamble. But the drawback is that the boards with better DCRGs are probably capable of PC1200 which would be very nice with a 1.6a running 150FSB.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Yes, overclocking the TH7II is a pretty good bet even with the -03s. But if you're thinking of getting the PC1066 RDRAM already, you have to ask yourself if a 533 MHz board (as Mark0999 says) might be worth the extra cost. Maybe the extra $50 for a P4T533-C is worth removing any motherboard limitations that might stop you from reaching 533 FSB (with your P4 1.6A); and it is doubtful that you'd get beyond the 150 Mhz limit on that board anyway. Of course, if your P4 1.6A turns out to be a stinker and doesn't make the overclock then your agp and pci will be running slow (without the agp/pci lock feature). I'm wrestling with these same questions...