Venice or Winchester?

[mounaki]

Just wondering,

what exactly is the difference between those 2 cores? They're both 90nm, both 512 L2 cache, both support SSE3, right? Or wrong?

Since they're almost identical in price, which one do you think one should go for?
Venice 3200 or Winchester 3200?

Thanks!

[Lee H]

Venice cores are the most up-to-date core and have SSE3 support whereas the Winchester did not.

The venices also have an updated memory controller allowing the use of 4 sticks of memory @ PC3200 speeds as the winchesters used to drop 4 sticks back to PC2700 operating speeds.

Hope this helps

[mounaki]

Mmm... nice.. I knew the Venices were newer cores but I thought the improvements from the Winchesters were more obscure and insignificant.

That memory controller you mentioned, WildMonkey, effectively means I can add, say, a 1 gig stick of 3200 ram, added to my 2*512 megs of 3200 ram without any real problems, right? (assuming the ram timings, cas etc. are the same for all the ram sticks) That rules!
Thanks for the reply.

[chriswood_7]

No mate

You can only use 2 or 4 sticks as far as i know, I had this dilemma when moving to an A64 rig.. I had that type of setup with 2x256MB and 1x512 and if I had have turned it on I could have damaged my motherboard and memory. If your going A64 it has to be either 1,2 or 4 DIMM sticks, no matter if theyre all the same type of memory. I have a winchester and have problems in any DIMM slots above 1 and 2.. with random restarts and crashes, although in the first two slots its fine and runs smooth and fast.

Oh and there is only half a dozen configurations you can have them in too normally, like in 1 and 2 or 3 and 4, i dont think you can do simm slots 1 and 3 or 4, or 2 and 3 or 4...

Hope this helps mate

Chris

[mounaki]

Ah, ok Chris, thanks a lot.

I guess my options now are:
a) Add another 2*512
b) Add another 2*1 gig
c) Add another 2*1 gig, and remove my old 2*512

Should I be expecting any compromises in performance if I go for options a) or b) ?
If the memory controller supports up to 4 sticks of 3200, there shouldn't be any, right?

[sawyen]

2 x 1G should be plenty... running 4 sticks requires you to run 2T... which is abit rubbish for my preference.. you could keep that 2 sticks of 512 when u ever build another system.. say a HTPC?

[chriswood_7]

If you go winchest you will be automatically downclocked to PC2700 so id get a venice and 2 sticks of 512MB.. does anyone really need 2GB?

[ja3h]

Anyone who plays bf2 needs it! It took like 4 minutes to load up a map, now its done in a few seconds! I notice the diff with 2gb compared to 1gb!

[sawyen]

Anyone who plays bf2 needs it! It took like 4 minutes to load up a map, now its done in a few seconds! I notice the diff with 2gb compared to 1gb!

Enuf said.. 2GB makes a whole lot of difference when we minions play BF2..

[oralpain]

Venice chips also tend to OC better.

I have my week 17 3000+ running at 2,814Mhz on air.

[mounaki]

what hsf are you using, oralpain? any suggestions?

[oralpain]

I'm using a Zalman 7700Cu, but thats just cause it cools my motherbaord and ram as well. I'm fairly certain the stock heatsink would be good enough to cool the cpu at this speed (312x9) and voltage (1.5). The zalman isn't even warm.

Motherboard is a DFI NF4-DAGF, btw.