Which is better for the Intel P4 w/ 533fsb: DDR or RAMBUS?

[StattlichPassat]

SITUATION: You're building an Intel Northwood P4-based workstation for a mission critical enviroment. Uptime, stability and high performance must all go hand in hand. Stability and performance are higher priorities than the cost, but cost is certainly a factor. Do you pick DDR-RAM or RAMBUS memory?

Please, no DDR vs. RAMBUS flames.

Also, if anyone knows who makes a motherboard for this application that will hold up to 4GB of either DDR or RAMBUS, please let me know! I can't find anything higher than 3GB.

 

[Biggs]

Either will do, just make sure both your mobo and ram support ECC.

 

[Athlon4all]

RAMBUS all the way if you have unlimited funding. If you don't, 845G or P4X333 with DDR333 will be OK as well, they wioll be in some cases 10% slower than PC1066. but wit current rambus pricing its just tough to justify the cost

 

[MrGrim]

RDRAM

 

[Pabster]

DDR.

PC3200 comes within 7% of PC1066 RDRAM. You get twice the RAM for the same cost. Pretty easy decision.

 

[ToBeMe]

Well Pabster............that used to be true...........but, have you looked at the way DDR is skyrocketing. LOL! I'm waiting for and will try the P4T533 with the PC4200 single rimms which according to speculation should be very O/C'able and come in about 10% - 15% above the cost of DDR400 as it is spec priced now IF you can find the DDR400 which is immpossible since it's not seemingly even a standard yet andmay never be that.............

I have to hand it to you though Pabster..........your persistance played a part in me going to my first DDR solution with an SiS board and now I own two of them and will buy the soon to be released 648DX as soon as they are out! I just have to try one of these new P4T533's with the single rimm PC4200 RDRAM though..................preliminary B/M's made their speed look to be above anything except perhaps DC DDR which won't be available to buy this year the way it looks...................the boards will be here soon, but, everything I've read points to next year for the ram to become available... By that time too, the P4T533 already has support for PC9600 RDRAM which according to several sites should come along in H1 '03 so once again, a LOT of new and exciting things are coming our way!!!

 

[Pabster]

ToBeMe wrote:

"Well Pabster............that used to be true...........but, have you looked at the way DDR is skyrocketing. LOL! I'm waiting for and will try the P4T533 with the PC4200 single rimms which according to speculation should be very O/C'able and come in about 10% - 15% above the cost of DDR400 as it is spec priced now IF you can find the DDR400 which is immpossible since it's not seemingly even a standard yet andmay never be that............."

Yep, DDR is on the rising tide again. Thankfully, I've got enough DDR laying around for several more rigs P4T533 w/ RIMM4200 will be in the spotlight for a brief time, certainly, as it will outpace PC3200 in synthetic benchies. But I predict it will fade in to the sunset rather quickly as faster DDR solutions come around.

"I have to hand it to you though Pabster..........your persistance played a part in me going to my first DDR solution with an SiS board and now I own two of them and will buy the soon to be released 648DX as soon as they are out! I just have to try one of these new P4T533's with the single rimm PC4200 RDRAM though..................preliminary B/M's made their speed look to be above anything except perhaps DC DDR which won't be available to buy this year the way it looks...................the boards will be here soon, but, everything I've read points to next year for the ram to become available... By that time too, the P4T533 already has support for PC9600 RDRAM which according to several sites should come along in H1 '03 so once again, a LOT of new and exciting things are coming our way!!!"

The 645/645DX boards are great. 648 looks awesome too. Never had the slightest reservation recommending SiS. The prices are right and the performance is amazing. Certainly, 645/645DX have been "dethroned" but not significantly. 648 ought to hold SiS tight in the marketplace for a while. PC9600? Well, I'm waiting for PC12000 DDR-II

There is a lot of exciting stuff coming up yet this year. Now I've got to work on keeping the plastic in the wallet...

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: NightFlyerGTI
SITUATION: You're building an Intel Northwood P4-based workstation for a mission critical enviroment. Uptime, stability and high performance must all go hand in hand. Stability and performance are higher priorities than the cost, but cost is certainly a factor. Do you pick DDR-RAM or RAMBUS memory?

Please, no DDR vs. RAMBUS flames.

Also, if anyone knows who makes a motherboard for this application that will hold up to 4GB of either DDR or RAMBUS, please let me know! I can't find anything higher than 3GB.

If you are doing mission critical, believe me your RAM is the least of your worries. The OS, Hard drive (IDE, SCSI, RAID 1/0 etc) would be top of my list.

There is no physical evidence whatsoever that DDR or RDRAM is more stable then the other in any environment. If there is, I haven?t seen it.

Both technologies are great, it?s no secret that RDRAM offers more bandwidth when coupled with the P4, however DDR is no slouch, and not far behind. Though for me the question would be the over all system performance, that being the case DDR & RDRAM are both excellent.

 

[StattlichPassat]

Excellent- thanks for the good replies, guys. Keep them coming, please!

 

[Robohood326]

Either one will give you excellent performance. If your not into overclocking and having the latest and greatest then I must agree with a previous poster that the Ram is really of little concern campared to some of the other components. Just make sure you buy quality Ram and you'll be fine. Whether it's DDR or RDRAM.................flip a coin if all your looking for is stablility.

 

[StattlichPassat]

Awesome- thanks. Will performance be noticably faster with RAMBUS though?

 

[MadRat]

<<Also, if anyone knows who makes a motherboard for this application that will hold up to 4GB of either DDR or RAMBUS, please let me know! I can't find anything higher than 3GB.>>

The trace lengths are too long in both technologies to allow more than 2-3 sticks of RAM. DDR can run 3 sticks, although it affects stability when you run larger sticks of RAM. This is why you'll find most of the larger sticks only available in slower speed grades. RDRAM (not RAMBUS ) is limited to two sticks and must be installed in pairs, so its always using two sticks of RDRAM.

<<SITUATION: You're building an Intel Northwood P4-based workstation for a mission critical enviroment. Uptime, stability and high performance must all go hand in hand. Stability and performance are higher priorities than the cost, but cost is certainly a factor.>>
<<Either will do, just make sure both your mobo and ram support ECC.>>
<<If you are doing mission critical, believe me your RAM is the least of your worries. The OS, Hard drive (IDE, SCSI, RAID 1/0 etc) would be top of my list.>>
<<If your not into overclocking and having the latest and greatest then I must agree with a previous poster that the RAM is really of little concern campared to some of the other components.>>

I got the impression that Biggs statement was largely misunderstood because of its brevity BUT the most valuable of the three follow-up posts listed above. Not knocking the other two guys, just that Biggs nailed the answer by suggesting ECC whereas the suggestions seem to meander towards non-Workstation rigs. The idea is to run a machine that supports recovery from instability such as chipkill, something that no DDR chipsets for Pentium4 currently support. The only two chipsets that do are the 850 and 850E. Likewise they both support ECC and meet the strictest industrial standards of stability. In this case, not because of performance, the RDRAM is the ONLY answer that meets his needs.

<<PC3200 comes within 7% of PC1066 RDRAM. You get twice the RAM for the same cost. Pretty easy decision.>>

ToBeMe pretty well put that argument down. DDR's rise in price is just insane.

 

[John]

RDRAM (not RAMBUS ) is limited to two sticks and must be installed in pairs, so its always using two sticks of RDRAM.

PC1066 does not follow that long standing tradition. You get both channels "squeezed" into one module.

 

[dexvx]

Name Brand DDR memory at CL2 (Crucial, Corsair, and Mushkin) arent cheap, even at PC2700 Speeds. Of course they're cheaper than RDram. I believe if you want GB's of Ram, you need to go past Northwood and into the Xeon community, yea thats not cheap either, but not many desktop class motherboards can hold 4GB of memory stably.

i860 is the RDram flavor, and E7500 is the Dual Channel DDR flavor. I believe the i860 is limited to 4GB of RDram and the E7500 can do 6GB of DDR. The i860 board is older than the E7500 (2 years running), so it doesnt have features like PCI-X or built in Intel gigabit-LAN, or other newer tech. The i860 board itself is cheaper the the E7500 and performs on par to the E7500. The E7500 is limited to Dual Channel PC1600 DDR, btw, so PC2700 DDR isnt going to get you anywhere.

 

[Krk3561]

PC1066 does not follow that long standing tradition. You get both channels "squeezed" into one module.

If you use PC1066 you need to install it in pairs. If you use RIMM 4200 RDRAM (PC1066 RDRAM with both channels squeezed into one module), you can install a single stick. Currently, the only motherboard that supports RIMM 4200 RDRAM is the Asus P4T533 (no "C") and I think that comes with a 512MB stick. Also, RDRAM is much better for the P4 because it has a much higher bandwith than DDR and is faster.

EDIT: He said he wanted stability so in order for DDR to come close to PC1066 you would need to overclock and overclocking decreases stability.

 

[zzzz]

RDRAM (not RAMBUS ) is limited to two sticks and must be installed in pairs, so its always using two sticks of RDRAM.

Actually you can have 4 sticks of RDRAM (PC800/PC1066) in Th7-2, P4T-E and other i850(E) mobos.

 

[dlance]

Well my last few posts have been about something similiar to this so I'll chip in my 3 cents!


Granted if money is no object and you feel Rambus's future is secure...then go with a RDR1066 platform, but as I've been doing alot of research in the last few weeks, my pick at the moment is we......here goes

VIA P4PB400 which runs DDR400...heres a few links, and some of the reviews show the performance within well what seems to me less than the 10% or 7% listed, but I havent done the math...


True DDR is on the rise, but 512mb of XMS3000 from corsair is still cheaper than 512mb of RDR1066![S=Tom's Hardware Guide review of the P4PB333 same chipset apparently as the P4PB400 (400 supports DDR400 thus the naming) [url]http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/02q2/020514/index.html[/url][/S]

well and crud theres a good review at Legionhardware.com but their site must be down or something...*shrug*

Take a look at the Via board, I think its pretty damn good compared to the RDR options!

 

[Krk3561]

The Via does seem like a good choice but the only problem is Via is being sued by intel because they do not have the permision from intel to make a p4 chipset, so we may never see that board.

 

[MadRat]

VIA doesn't make a chipset that meets the industrial standards of a Workstation level system.