xp and ram

[infielder6]

my friend wants to get an amd anthalon xp 1600 but use his sdram with it.. the mother board he wants to get does support sdram but i thought that the xp chip requires ddr ram.. i wasn't 100% sure so i came to you guys the experts.. could you pls tell me if he can use sdram and if not... what would be the best chip he could get and use sdram with

[Beefy]

Yeah, you can use SDRAM with Athlon XP's. It's just that most people choose to use DDR due to the performance gains. But, SDRAM will still work.

[Darthtanion]

Agreed. As long as the chipset supports both SDRAM and the new Athlon XP processor, your buddy is set. A couple that come to mind right off is the ECS K7S5A based on the SiS745 chipset and the Abit KT133A based on the KT133A chipset.

One thing to keep in mind if he decides to go the KT133A route is that not all of these boards will support the Athlon XP processor. The Abit board mentioned above has to be the rev1.3 or it won't work out very well (if at all). Just make sure to check with the vendor and see if they support the processor.

[infielder6]

thanks guys.. i'll pass that info right along... will there be much of a bottle neck though with the sdram

[Darthtanion]

Yes.

Here's a basic example of what I mean...

I started off with a standard Thunderbird 1000 processor that ran for a good while on an Abit KT133A-RAID board. It uses SDRAM and was considered one of the better overclocking boards around. My 3DMark2001 scroes were 6078. When I upgraded to my current EPoX 8KHA+ board which uses DDR memory, my scores shot up to 7472 with the same equipment. I know that the advances in the chipset helped out the scores, but a lot of it was also due to the DDR memory.

Also, under SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmarks, my scores showed about a 90% increase.

This is the kind of bottlenecks that you can expect when using SDRAM, but if this is what your buddy can budget, then it should at least get him by until he can get something better.

[infielder6]

thanks... that's good info.. maybe you could help me out too.. i'm planning on getting an amd processor too.. i'm thinking a 1800 or 1700.. i'm not sure.. i'm going to be upgrading in a month or so.. so which processor should i get.. best value or course.. also which mobo is the best value too.. and i am going to be using ddr ram.. hopefully 512 single stick ..

[TisMeDT]

ECS K7S5A based on the SiS745 chipset

I thought that board had the sis 735 chipset

[Darthtanion]

Sorry... wrong button. It was about 6AM when I wrote that. :)