rec.autos.simulators

I'm thinking on buying a new Athlon 1.4 GHz motherboard combo to replace
my 900 MHz pentium. You can buy boards that use ether DDR or SDRAM. Some
even support both, in which case I'm really interested if anyone has one
of these. SDRAM now upgrade DDR later. What  I'm really wondering is how
much performance difference there is between the two. Yes I have gone to
sites that bench mark RAM like Tom's hardware etc. But you guys and gals
are the real world. Because this is a *** machine and used for GPL,
NASCAR 4 etc. this only group  I trust  for the answer. TIA!!!!

My current config is:

Abit VH6 motherboard
900 MHz Pentium
Sound Blaster Live 5.1
GForce II GTS 32 meg
256 CAS 2 SDRAM memory

Hawk

  I can't say for sure, but just on running a couple of different cpu's I
think your processor change will make up for any difference in memory
speeds.  My only concern with dual purpose boards is just about everytime
they try it..the dual boards are slower.  I remember they used to have a
shared pci/isa slot motherboard...thought it was the neatest idea...it was a
turkey...now the sdram/ddr ram MAY work out just fine...I'm just leary of
that type of deal.    With most of the sims you mentioned, the cpu 'should'
be the real deciding factor and then the video card...I just don't see
either of those impacting framerates to a noticable amount.
  I do, however,  welcome comments from those who have run both types of
memory...any racing benchmarks out there?
dave henrie

I don't think Athlons are as memory hungry as P4's.  That's why P4 with
Rambus is faster than P4 and DDR.  The P4 with SDR PC133 takes a huge
performance hit.  I'd go with DDR so that when you want to upgrade to a
2GHZ? Athlon 4 you can be sure you won't need a whole new mobo.

Pretty much on the mark there Kirk. The Athlon was never designed with
DDR memory in mind (or even available) and therefore doesn't really
make use of it. That said, the Athlon 4 (when fully released) WILL
make good use of DDR RAM.

Price is the main thing, not performance, with DDR. In a years time,
you'll still have perfectly useful DDR RAM with your Athlon 4. If you
get SDR, you'll probably dump it with your next upgrade.

BUT - DDR mobos cost more, as does DDR RAM.

Me personally, I'd get SDR and a KT133A chipset mobo. For my money,
they'll probably have pc2600 (166mhz DDR) mobo's when you get an
Athlon 4...So you'd need new RAM anyway.

Rafe Mc

BTW, you'll notice very little advantage between DDR and SDR in most
sims, they just don't use that much memory bandwidth. A faster CPU
will make 10x the difference.

On Sun, 26 Aug 2001 19:18:22 -0700, "Kirk House"

Yes, buyt when it comes to utilizing the AGP bus at 4X with a good
video card DDR over SDR can make a difference according to this
article.

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=64