Motherboards, DDR 400, ATA 133

[excalibr]

Hi all,

It is not hard to find recommendations on what to get for a new PC, but it was rather difficult to locate info/sites which talks about how they all hang together. For example, for a better-than-average system, I'm looking at getting DDR400 and ATA/133 disks. I realise the motherboard has to support DDR400 and ATA/133 etc. but I'm hard pressed to find anything that gives a concise yet meaningful background to all this. Say, for DDR400, what's the optimal bus speed that I should look for in a motherboard, and why? Same with ATA/133 ...

Any intro/guide/faq/primer on each of the subjects: mobo, disks, memory and how it all interconnects would be great! Does anyone know if such things exist?

Thanks, Excalibur

 

[Blujacket]

I believe DDR 400 is a FSB/Front Side Bus speed of 400MHz and using PC3200 RAM. ATA/UltraDMA 133 is a function of the IDE controller, an 80-conductor cable, and the hard drive support.

 

[Blujacket]

Disregard, didn't see you other post on the same subject.

 

[paparazi]

What you are asking for is a technicians knowlegde neatly compressed into one post.
It is easy to give you recomendations on products but not so to turn you instantly into a tecknical guru.
Just to give you a take on the two items you listed.
DDR400 (PC3200) to run at it's design speed you either need an Intel P4 (800 front side bus version) or an AMD Athlon XP3.0 or over but 400fsb (or one of the new Athlon 64's or P4 Extreme CPU's)
As for you ATA133, you have fallen for a common misconception, only Maxtor make ATA133 drives so why then is the Western Digital Special Edition faster than the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 when the WD is only ATA100?
Reason: ATA133 (133mb/sec) is only the maximum transfer rate the bus can handle, the actual drive max peak transfer rate is well below 100mb/sec (a bit like having a speedometer on a car that reads 150mph when the vehicles maximum speed is only 100mph flat out)
Just to confuse you even more, if I were building a "better than average system" I would be buying a SATA (serial ATA) hard drive and not the older Parallel ATA, these newer drives have a SATA 150 bus controllers, but again don't be carried away with the percieved increase in bus speed, this is just the max the bus can handle, the hard drives have a considerably slower transfer rate than the rated bus.
The Hitachi 7K250 SATA HDD range recently won "the best" award on Toms Hardware for the (best all round 7,200rpm range of drives)
Martin


Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[excalibr]

> It is easy to give you recomendations on products but not so to turn you instantly into a tecknical guru.

I fully appreciate forums/posts are here to give you specific responses to questions, but I was hoping someone out there has seen websites containing such all-encompassing primers, covering issues such as how there are different buses/interfaces connecting the CPU to memory (FSB), disks (ATA/SATA), video cards (AGP), and at what speeds do they normally run at etc. etc. I would not have expected it too be this hard to find though.

Back to the memory/FSB issue, would appreciate if you could clear something up for me.

> DDR400 (PC3200) to run at it's design speed you either need an Intel P4 (800 front side bus version) or an AMD Athlon XP3.0 or over but 400fsb (or one of the new Athlon 64's or P4 Extreme CPU's)

I read somewhere AMD first came up with double-pumped FSB's. And then Intel came up with quad-pumped. So if the "native" FSB runs at 200Mhz, AMD would be 400FSB and Intel 800FSB?

Since 800FSB seems to be the fastest around today, can I assume the fastest "native" FSB around is 200Mhz?

Is this why DDR400 is recommended in this scenario, that DDR 400 is actually double-data-rate of 200Mhz (2 x 200 = 400) where 200Mhz is the "native" FSB speed?

OR AM I MAJORLY CONFUSED???

Thanks for your help!
Excalibur

 

[cdogg]

excalibr,
You've done your research, that's evident. However, don't get caught up in the numbers game too much. Architecture, instructions sets, and pipelines are just a few examples of concepts you don't hear too much about. Every CPU and motherboard relies on their efficiency. Pure speed ratings of the FSB, for example, forecast only a glimpse of the true overall performance of your system.

With that said, it doesn't hurt to make sure you match the memory speed with the FSB (See your other thread for more info). Just don't assume that an 800MHz quad-pumped FSB is going to yield better performance than a 400MHz double-pumped one. Both have their own advantages since they rely on many other factors and share a different architecture.

This site has a ton of in-depth articles covering many aspects of the PC:
www.pcguide.com/topic.html


~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[excalibr]

> This site has a ton of in-depth articles covering many aspects of the PC:

http://www.pcguide.com/topic.html

Thanks for the tips, I spent a bit of time googling on this topic, and pcguide.com came up ... I bookmarked it for later hoping I could find something initially that's no so in-depth, and I'm still looking

Excalibur

 

[paparazi]

excalibr
"I read somewhere AMD first came up with double-pumped FSB's. And then Intel came up with quad-pumped. So if the "native" FSB runs at 200Mhz, AMD would be 400FSB and Intel 800FSB?"
Your interpretation on the subject is correct but as cdogg says it's a bit of a numbers game and doesn't necessarily reflect overall system performance, that's why reading reviews on new technology and how it all performs when "bolted together" is so important, reviews and your own real world experiences, you just gotta be in the mix.
A typical example of this was a couple of years ago when the Athlon XP's first came out, although they had a lower clock speed than their Intel P4 equivelents, at that time they were clearly quicker, an XP2.0+ clocked at arround 1600mhz was clearly outperforming the old P4 2gig (2000mhz)
Martin




Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.