Intel D975XBX2 vs. the ASUS P5B deluxe….P965 vs. 975X

[Babrbarossa]

haha- Spawning death does seem much more creative than simply stalking it.

philmar- when you get your build done, maybe you could phil us in on how it went?

[philmar]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

philmar- when you get your build done, maybe you could phil us in on how it went?

I definitely will!!

Should be soon. I delayed the build a I pondered which RAM to get. I was wondering if I should get EPP RAM as it seemed I could not have to worry about going in to the BIOS and OC'ing it since the mobo would do it.

But then I went with reg 800 RAM since I'll probably want to oc the CPU anyway.

[enaberif]

Conroe E6600 Core Duo 2.4 GHz processor
2 GB RAM
EVGA e-GeForce 7600GT nVidia 256MB PCI-Express
3 Seagate Barracuda hard drives
Coolermaster Centurion 5 silver mid-tower ATX Case with 380 WATT PSU
Thermaltake Big Typhoon VX CPU cooler and a fan for the hard drives


With the Centurion Case you'll have a fan in front of the hard drives for cooling already and that will be plenty.

This case can fit a Scythe Ninja with room to spare so think of that for a cpu cooler or a artic freezer.

You'll want to upgrade your power supply to a minimum of say 500w or so.

Intel boards are a great board if you want a stable board and to do nothing else with. I highly suggest the Asus P5B or the Gigabyte 965-DS3 for a system board.

[philmar]

thanks for your reply.
I went with the Badaxe2 because I valued stability over overclocking. I MAY- probably will- oc in the future. The Badaxe2 is able to be oc'ed. This build will have my life's photos on it - so stability (and a backup strategy) are paramount, not shaving a few seconds off of a batch process.
I went with a 550 Watt PSU - thanks.
The Gigabyte and ASUS boards are great boards to OC but I wanted stability above all. Intel is an expert at stable board construction. ASUS are experts at MASS-production board processes. They make great boards at a cheap price - but it is hit and miss with them (though the misses are infrequent).
The Badaxe2 will be all that I want now and possibly in to the future. When I am familiar with oc'ing I may opt for a board that is better designed for that.

[philmar]

I know this is a moot point for me as my RAM is purchased but I was wondering:
Is there is any improvement to the PC performance of the Badaxe2 (FSB = 533) at STOCK with 800 MHz DDR2 RAM over 533 or 667 RAM? Is the performance improvement miniscule (i.e. 1-3%)?

[Babrbarossa]

I would have though that it would be quite a bit greater than 1-3%. Did you find that number somewhere online?

[sswilson]

There should be quite a large improvement.

Because of the higher latencies over DDR1, DDR2 didn't really begin to match pc3200 (ddr1 400) until we started hitting the above 600 sticks.

Don't confuse mem speeds with fsb speeds, it's a newer board so it should have no problems taking advantage of ddr2 800 (it works off of multiplers or divisors of fsb).

[philmar]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

I would have though that it would be quite a bit greater than 1-3%. Did you find that number somewhere online?

No, I got it of the top of my head.
I had NO idea what improvement 800 MHx RAM would give over 533 RAM at stock speeds (no overclocking)

[Babrbarossa]

Those number (533, 667, 800) are frequencies in MHz- so 800 ram has 50% more bandwidth than 533, which is significant.

[philmar]

Originally Posted by Babrbarossa

Those number (533, 667, 800) are frequencies in MHz- so 800 ram has 50% more bandwidth than 533, which is significant.

But does that relate to any REAL measurable performance improvements at stock? and how much? I've been reading some core duo reviews that keep saying that memory behaves differently on these CR2 boards compared to AMD boards. They say that due to the processor architecture of CPUs like my E6600, the improvements to performance between 533 and 800 MHz RAM is insignificant compared to what was witnessed with AMD boards/CPU combos. But they never say how much of an improvement occurs.