Advice On P4's

[M@rco]

Right lads and ladys can you give me some advice. At the mo i have 512 DDR2100 and a P4 2gig, now would you upgrade to 512 DDR 3200 crappy make and get a P4 2.4 800FSB , or get 512 of OCZ and overclock the old CPU?

Plus can you recoment a program that helpys you up the fsb from windows?

Cheers!

[blockers]

What fsb is the P4 2.0ghz? 400 or 533?

It is probably more worthwhile getting better RAM really. as DDR2100 doesnt really supply the much needed bandwidth for P4's. Dont get crappy RAM, i made that mistake once, if you get crappy RAM (i.e. unbranded) you will get slow timings, and wont be able to overclock at all.

I would go for the OCZ, or corsair. Try to get 2x256mb (even if you dont run dual channel.) as one day you may find yourself with a dual channel board.

Will

[Mr Meltdown]

Depends on what motherboard you currently have now or intend to use.

You may get 2.66Ghz + out of your 2.0, but I guess you'd have tried that already by now wouldn't you?

You may be better to sell it and put the money to a different CPU, but that also applies to the rest of your kit really as well.

MM

[M@rco]

WEll ihavent overclocked and the FSB is 400. The rest of my kit is fine got an aniversary shuttle with a 9800se softmodded , and 80gig sata HD.

[Rabs]

Chuck the FSB up to 120, that'll give you 2.4. Put the memory divider on 1/1 so that the PC2100 works in sync.

I suppose you could get the 200 FSB 2.4c P4 but dont expect a 'massive' performance jump.

[blockers]

There is no way that 'crappy' pc2100 is gonna go to 200fsb. As pc2700 struggles.

Get the RAM, pc3500 would be great for higher fsb's.
pc2100 = 133mhz - fsb (266mhz)
pc2700 = 166mhz - fsb (333mhz)
pc3200 = 200mhz - fsb (400mhz)
pc3500 = 217mhz - fsb (434mhz)
pc3700 = 233mhz - fsb (467mhz)
pc4000 = 250mhz - fsb (500mhz)

With P4's the higher the fsb the better it will perform. As you cant unlock the processers you have to use high speed RAM. I would personally go for pc3500, as this will give you 217fsb, which even without overclocking will be able to give you very tight timings. And it will give you a lot of room to overclock, without being really expensive.

Isntead of spending lots of money on OCZ pc3200, why not get twinmoss pc3500 CL2 (dont know if they actually do that.....) As this would be a lot less expensive, i would say, and deliver improved performance.

Will

[M@rco]

Cheers mate might have some OCZ 3700 lined up will this cut it?

[Swafe]

id say so

[shamus21]

Yes Blocker you can get Twinmoss Rated at cas2 but only in the single sided stuff (256 dimm)_ about £ 50.00 a stick but the best timing i have been able to get are only 2,3,2,5/6 can`t get the gem of 2,2,2,6 .. It is the cas to ras that is the problem with twinmoss ram unless you can get it with winbond chips but only the old BH5 chips not the new types CH5.
CH5 chip are newer and cheaper to make but take a hit on the Latency. (Timings).
I put up thread on timings with Crucial ram on 512Megstick pc3200 and it seems you can get 2.5-2-2-6 with this ram and some extra volts and a lot less money unless you need very high F/S bus .

M@rco I would way up the pro`s and con`s of the money you can save on cheaper Ram that you could then spend on a faster P4 unless you want the best of both worlds.

[Ethos]

My Twinmos w/ch-5 can do 2-6-2-2 no problem.....

[Jiff Lemon]

Whats the overclocking options like on the shuttle though? Wouldn't have thought you've many options.

[M@rco]

Its quite good actually well i have options for my APG/PCI bus and FSB really all i need , oh well and some temp feature.

[telfer12000]

I have extensively tested the Copper spreader OCZ 3700 and it will do 250 mhz (DDR500) at 2.5-7-3-3 with decent cooling and I reckon at least 240 mhz with the same timings in a shuttle (no extra v required although it will go much higher and take up to 3v stable!). It's truly superior memory but it is very expensive and I doubt whether you could ever fully utilise it in a P4 2G (Northwood I presume) setup.

That said, it would work well in your shuttle and it would still be useful to you for your next upgrade in a year.

But that's not the point, the answer to your question depends to some extent on what overclocking options are available on the shuttle which I have no idea about.

On all the C class (800 FSB) P4s you have the ability on most/many mobos to run the memory at 5:4 and 3:2 timings which means that you can increase the bus ratio on a 2.4C from the stock 200 x 12 to, for example, 250 x 12 ( giving u a 3 G CPU) and then run the memory at 3:2 i.e. 166 mhz fsb ( which means that pC2700 of any brand will work in this scenario). Your current PC2100 will run at 3:2 with a 2.4C at stock but you won't be able to increase the fsb on the CPU by much unless your PC2100 is top quality i.e. if your current DDR will stand 140 fsb instead of the 133 fsb rating then you can push the CPU to 210 (140 x 3:2) x 12 = 2.52 g (but that's not very impressive).

I believe even given that you have fsb options in your bios you won't get much more than 120 fsb out of a Northwood 2g P4 in a shuttle no matter which ddr you used giving you a maximum CPU rating of 2.4g i.e. 120 x 20.

I suppose what I'd do I were you is buy a 2.4 P4C and run it at 1:1 with the OCZ memory (assuming you can afford both) and push the fsb on the CPU to 250 x 12 = 3 G and I'd be very surprised if you didn't get top stable performance and if you are prepared and able to push the volts on the OCZ to 2.85 ish and you're lucky with your CPU you might get up to 280 x 12 (3.36 g) which is not bad at all

[M@rco]

Well i tihnk i am going to get new RAM as i have heard 2GiG Northwood and yes mine is a Northwood can reach 2.7.