B series questions

Nancy-

The B series uses the i820 chipset with RAMBUS memory. 133 MHz FSB. AGP 4x. Native ATA66 support. It will use the Vancover i820 motherboard from Intel, the VC820.

There isn't anything "wrong" with the B series; however the proper memory is very expensive. I haven't seen any RIMMs for sale (also haven't looked real hard), but the last time I checked to upgrade a B from 128 MB to 256 MB was a almost $700 dollar option. OUCH!

Adios!









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Hi David,

Yeah, when I did a sample configuration of the system, it was VERY expensive. Didn't I read somewhere, (Not on this forum) that the Rambus memory wasn't all that fast?

And David, why do I get that hum when I access a post of yours? Do you insert something with your posts that I am not hearing properly? I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just curious. Nancy B.

Nancy,

From the reviews I've read Rambus memory doesn't offer anything more than a very slight marginal increase in performance and comes no where near justifiable for the price.

	LL&P

Fast is a relative term. An Alpha cpu system is very fast; also very expensive.

Say you ordered a B733 with 400 MHz RIMMs; it would probably be described as 800 Mhz memory (because it uses the rising and falling clock cycles, just like AGP 2x). SDRAM is usually only 100 MHz. How do they do get that speed increase?

Well, they reduce the bandwidth from 64 bits to 16 bits.

I suppose the theory is that if you can hit 4 clock cycles, the bandwidth doesn't matter.

While benchmarks do show that it is quicker than the old standard 100 MHz memory in virtually every application, whether it is worth the bucks is very debatable. If your son is a hard core gamer, is 10 fps in Quake3 worth the cost? I don't know; unfortunately, much of the really nice goodies of the i820 (ATA 66; AGP 4x) are not available at all with the BX chipset motherboard.

If your son is just doing standard business apps and only occasionally playing a game, a T___r would certainly be the better choice (unless, of course, he would be happy with just 128 MB; indeed, 128 is probably enough for most uses, only those who churn out serious photoshop files and things of that ilk probably need more than 128).

Complicating the picture is the rumors that Intel, faced with the Athlon competition, the VIA 133 chipset competition, and the extremely reluctant adoption of RAMBUS by OEMs, is working very hard to develop a PC 133 chipset. Thus, there isn't a good idea whether the memory price will fall significantly.

Tough time to buy.

If you could tell us what apps your son runs on a daily basis, you could get a more definative answer, but I would lean towards the T___r (make sure it is an T___r; that will get a CuMine processor, with full speed L2 cache, it significantly outperforms the old Katmai processor).

The hum.

It is a sound file embedded in my sig. If you watch my sig, in the left hand side you will see a circle. Inside the circle is the word "home." "Orbiting around the circle is a reddish globe. When the reddish globe hits the "h" in home, a sound file starts to play. You should hear a hum over the "h" and the "e"; if you miss it, you can right click on my sig, select rewind, right click again and select play.

This will cause my sig to replay and you can judge for yourself how good my timing was...







Adios!