Which P4 to get?

[pranav81]

BTW,Ian why did you not go for 875?If you want you can exchange the board for the newer Neo2-PFS or Neo2-PFISR.
The URL is as below,

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_li ... s=mb&cpu=1




::Pranav::

[Ian]

It was a freebie.

[pranav81]

Well then replacement is out of question I think.



::Pranav::

[Kennyshin]

I'm waiting for a motherboard that has built-in dual GbE, 8-ch. S-ATA, PCI Express, etc.

[grouch]

Prescott (E) (1MB) vs. Northwood (C) (512K)
Someone mentioned that a Northwood would be better than Prescott at the 2.8 Ghz.
Why is that??
Shouldn't a 1MB cache be better than a 512K cache regardless of the speed??

[Kennyshin]

Prescott (E) (1MB) vs. Northwood (C) (512K)
Someone mentioned that a Northwood would be better than Prescott at the 2.8 Ghz.
Why is that??
Shouldn't a 1MB cache be better than a 512K cache regardless of the speed??

Better but the added 512KB L2 does not seem to do much benefits yet. Wait since new processors and motherboards are alwaysing added.

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/ho ... _i_cp.html
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/ho ... _i_ml.html

[dr_st]

Prescott (E) (1MB) vs. Northwood (C) (512K)
Someone mentioned that a Northwood would be better than Prescott at the 2.8 Ghz.
Why is that??
Shouldn't a 1MB cache be better than a 512K cache regardless of the speed??

The Prescott is not just a bigger cache, it's also has some architectural changes, so the formula is not that simple. Tests have shown that in some applications the Prescott wins, while in others it loses to the Northwood.

[Ian]

I finally pulled that motherboard out. I came home today and it wouldn't load Windows. It would restart before it would load all the way. I finally went back and tried reinstalling Windows, but it kept failing.

Blah.. so much for freebies. Time to go buy a mobo. Recommend me one with a 865/875 chipset. This system won't be overclocked, but I need SATA and USB.

[dr_st]

You can go with one of the ASUS boards:

ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe (865 Chipset)
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe (875 Chipset)

Since you don't plan to overclock, I'd say the first one is a much better choice, because for a lower price you can get a board that performs almost as well as the 875 boards. With the right memory and some BIOS tweaking it can actually outperform most of the 875 boards. It's also loaded with features - 4 PATA, 4 SATA channels, RAID, 8 USB, 2 FireWire ports, Gigabit LAN, 8-channel onboard audio with a complete set of analog and digital outputs.

However, ASUS boards can get picky about other hardware (RAM mostly). If you want something that's guaranteed to work out of the box, get an ABIT (AI7 for the 865 chipset or IC7-MAX3 for the 875 chipset).

[Ian]

Finally heard back from MSI. They think its a bad southbridge chip since they've had a few other customers with problems similar to mine. They're sending their 875 board to replace it. Hopefully this one will work.