Re: 2 Gigabyte ddr2 memory modules for P5K WS


<soinie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4fp2l314escrh9lhleer3oo8s26et8gv8i@xxxxxxxxxx
On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:45:07 -0500, Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

soinie@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I'm in the process of putting this board, P5K WS, together and want to
buy all 8 gigs for the board now. I'm checking Crucial and Mushkin,
any suggestions as to speed and brand? Crucial has a nice chart that
suggests the memory modules, and two speeds were listed, 5300 and
6400. How much faster will the 6400 be in terms of actually
perceiving the increase in speed? I'm also thinking of the Core 2 Duo
E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz 4M shared L2 Cache. Would that be a good choice?
I've done a little research but probably not enough to make a
thoroughly educated guess in picking the best processor. I picked the
P5K because it has a serial port and I need one for an old Wacom
tablet, and it appears to be pretty stable with 8 gigs of memory.
Thanks

8GB is a lot of memory. The more memory, the more chance for an
error to creep in. Is an error free memory extremely important,
or is this just a gaming machine, where a crash or other fault
just means a reboot ?

It is possible to get ECC protection for memory products, but
this requires chipset and motherboard support. It skews the whole
selection process for motherboards. So it is not something to be
taken lightly.

It is pretty hard to guess about the processor as well. There
are dual core and quad cores, at prices stretching from the
$280 level, to $1345. What level of performance do you really
need ? What kind of tasks do you carry out ? A popular processor
with gamers, is the Q6600, a quad at 2.4GHz that easily overclocks
to 3GHz (G0 stepping is best). The E6850 is about the same
price as the Q6600.

I guess I'm trying to figure out whether you really need a
"workstation" or "server" class motherboard, or whether
your application looks more like a desktop. Some Asus motherboards
don't have a serial port on the back, but they do have a 20 pin
header for connection of a serial port bracket. It is also possible
to get PCI cards with serial ports on them, so a solution can be
achieved that way as well.

A motherboard like the Maximus Formula, with X38 chipset and
support for DDR2 memory with ECC protection, is the basis of a
good computing solution. It doesn't have a PCI-X slot, but does
have two large PCI Express slots. There is no serial port. So
that would be an example of a board covering computing requirements -
you can even use a new 45nm processor if you want (this one is
a 3GHz quad, a lot more money than the Q6600, but doesn't require
overclocking to get to 3GHz):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115035

Asus has a CPU Support page, where you can look up what boards
can support a given processor:

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpu_support_right_master.aspx?type=0&;

name=Core%202%20Extreme%20QX9650%20(3.00GHz%2C1333FSB%2CL2%3A2X6MB%2Crev.C0%2C4%20cores)&SLanguage=en-us

Paul

This is being built for Photo and video editing, not a gaming machine,
and I need a lot of memory so I can do my thing quickly hence the 8
gigs. I'm working on a box with 4 gigs now and it just isn't quite
enough given the size of graphics files I'm working with. And because
of the limited number of PCI slots on the boards these days, I don't
know if I can have an add on serial port card. I know that I want one
slot for a scsi adapter and could easily find something else to fill
the other slot with like a firewire card. I've been thinking of the
x38 chipset, but am I really future proofing a computer, or will I
ultimately be buying a new board in 3 or 4 yrs because other
technology has changed so dramatically that a new board instead of a
new processor is going to make the difference performance wise? What
is your opinion of the P5E WS board? I believe that also has a serial
port and is X38? Thanks very much for the reply.

I went to the local discount pc supplies shop yesterday with the intention
of buying a P5K series motherboard to build a Christmas present for one of
my sons.
Unfortunately my timing was off by a couple of days because they only had
integrated video cheaper versions left. The board I wanted is now
discontinued.

Additionally the premium quality P5E boards aren't readily available here,
yet, so my choice on the day was limited to a plain vanilla P5E.
Anyway I grabbed that board along with a case, 550W power-supply, 4Gigs RAM,
and Intel Q6600 cpu.
When I got home I researched the board that I had bought.
Summarising the differences over previous series.
It uses an X38 chipset along with the older ICH9R Southbridge.
It supports crossfire at x16 for both slots.
Supports PCI Express 2.0 for graphics.
X38 memory controller supports DDR2 as well as DDR3 SDRAM
Official support of 45nm processors.
The X38 Northbridge consumes more power.

My vanilla board uses a JMicron controller for PATA support and has only one
LAN controller while the WS version you are considering uses a Marvell
controller for PATA and external SATA support. It also includes 2 LAN.
Both boards include 2 firewire ports (one at the back and one onboard). I
myself always buy cases that include a front firewire connection as I use it
so much.
The WS version has a couple of pci slots and a pci-x slot both of which can
support SCSI cards.
It also includes an onboard serial/com port but I doubt that they supply a
bracket.

I had a look at some reviews of the P5E and performance wise it seems to be
on par with previous P35 and i975 boards.
It's probably a transition solution, waiting until the price of DDR3 RAM
comes down.
It would be interesting to see test results of say the WS version using low
latency DDR2 RAM and the other WS version that supports DDR3 RAM. I wonder
if there would be any real difference in speeds.

As far as future proofing goes. I have read that future Intel cpu's will
bring the memory controller on-die so that will mean a whole new motherboard
probably with DDR3 RAM by then.




.

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