About motherboards and RAMS

[rider66]

HI.
I am attempting to build a new computer. I'm thinking on P4 2.4 533MHZ.
The question is: what is the best motherboard and memory?.
I've got bad experiences with ASUS motherboards because my last one was a P3C2000. (lot of trouble) So I decided to go for Intel.
As I need Lan on board I found two options: 850's with rambus or 845's with ddr.
The main difference is the kind of memory.
So I'd like to klnow what you think regarding Intel as motherboard choice and what kind of memory would be the best choice.
Cost of memory won't be critical if there is a big difference in performance.

On the other hand, I read a lot of post about Athlon XP as the best choice if we compare it with P4 1.7.

Any advise would be very appreciated.

Thanks a lot

[Derek888]

You won't notice big difference from using rambus or ddr. Infacted from my own experience, i didn't notice any difference at all.

P4 - cooler and quieter....safer?.....and don't put faith in the MHZ Intel advertised.

Athlon - hotter and louder but faster and much cheaper.

p4's mb usually cost more than athlon xp's mb???

when looking for p4/amd motherboards, i would say motherboards made by Abit.

If you need more informations you can checkout the forum at http://www.icrontic.com

[Han]

Asus' P3C2000 is based on a really bad Intel's i820 chipset, therefore you can't blame only the board...

I'd go for the newest ASUS P4PE. The second choice would probably be one of the Gigabyte GA-8PE667 series.

These boards support DDR 266/333 (PC2100/2700) 184 pin (2.5V) memory. Go for Micron, Crucial or Samsung brands.

You can find lots of tests on the following sites:

http://www.anandtech.com/
http://www.tomshardware.com/
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/
http://www.tweaktown.com/
http://www.explosivelabs.com/
http://www.tbreak.com/
http://overclockers.com.au/

[Alexandrus]

Well, if you want Intel then go for a P4 2.4GHz indeed, the best choice right now and if you can get one made in CostaRica, they OC very well to 3GHz.
As for the board, I would suggest the EPoX 4PEA+ and some PC3200 RAM to go along with it, that is if you want overclocking. If not, standard PC2700 RAM should do. Good brands for RAM are Samsung, Crucial, Mushkin, Corsair, TwinMOS(not necessarily in that order).

If you want to go with AMD Athlon XP, then one of those new 2400+ CPUs will be a good choice, or the older 2000+ if you want cheaper.
For motherboard, either ABIT's KX7-333 or the newer KD7, or better yet EPoX's 8K9A2+(KT400 with LAN, Serial ATA, RAID etc) or the older 8K5A2+(KT333 with RAID, USB 2.0, LAN, sound etc) or the older yet very good 8K3A+(KT333). Same RAM applies here....
And note that I for one have had very good experience with EPoX boards and ABIT boards, but lately ABIT boards dissapointed me a lot.

[rider66]

Thank you very much for your fast replies.
I'm afraid that I must read a lot before make up my mind.

But I think that DDR's memory would be a good option because of performance/cost.

See you and Thx a lot.

[Alexandrus]

BTW, I forgot to mention that DDR is a bit more futureproof(sort of speak), because Intel will not support Rambus in their future chipsets but use dual channle DDR RAM, which provides very large memory bandwidth and lower latency. Not to mention lower cost.