rdram and intel chipsets

[tkim]

what are the major advantages/diadvantages of the 820 chipset and the newer p4 chipsets?

the reason i am asking is that i have the 820 with 128 rdram and a p3. it seems to work fine. however, i have heard many bad things about it. is is time for me to upgrade?

is it the end for the 820?

 

[Demon-Xanth]

The i820 is effectively dead. Single channel RDRAM proved to be expensive and no real improvement (it was actually worse). There were new 440BX boards since the last i820 board was released (that's how pathetic it is).

If it works for you, just roll with it. But I wouldn't recommend using that board in a long term upgrade path.

 

[fkloster]

I owned the storied Asus P3C-E for one full year. 99' to 00'?. Very stable performance but it is certainly dead. Performance was on par with typical 440bx offerings @ the time but the price was exorbenant. If you already have it, use it.

 

[tkim]

right now, i have a slot p3 1 gig. is there a motherboard that supports this chip and has the multi channel ram??

 

[Rand]

<< right now, i have a slot p3 1 gig. is there a motherboard that supports this chip and has the multi channel ram?? >>



The I840 chipset could take it and that had a dual channel RDRAM memory subsystem but I still wouldnt recommend it. The I840 was very solid and reliable, offered performance above that of the I820 but the price was absolutely ridiculous, and your still not likely to gain much performance at all.

In my own experiences the I815 + PC133 SDRAM was faster then the I840 w/PC800 RDRAM in most cases, not to mention being far far cheaper.

The P3 just didnt need the bandwidth that RDRAM could provide and so it was mostly wasted, and it was hurt by RDRAM slightly higher latency over conventional SDRAM.

Not to mention the I840 is pretty much dead also, the only area it did particularly well in was servers and it wasnt even terribly popular there.