socket 423 vs socket 478

[Budd]

i've never dealt with P4s before, just PIIIs and athlons. but now a customer wants a P4 system. i hate to sound stupid here, but whats the difference between the socket 423 and the 478? correct me if i am wrong, but the socket 478 is newer and uses sdram? is that right? i just need a little info before i choose the parts for the system. thanks guys

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[This message has been edited by Buddy Holly (edited October 16, 2001).]

[Darren Wilson]

Socket 423 is the original P4 platform based on the i850 chipset & RAMBUS(although there will be some boards with this socket using the VIA P4X266 chipset & DDR memory). Socket 478 is the later platform which is supported on both i850 & i845 boards and will also be available on the P4X266 & SIS645 DDR chipsets. The faster P4's will only be launched on S478 and when the 'Northwood' core based P4's & Celerons (Celerons on Northwood will be released in 2002) will only be available on this platform.

So to cut a long story short, if your customer wants an upgradable platform, then I suggest that you use the S478 based CPU's, on i845/SIS645/P4X266 for budget systems and on i850 (Abit TH7II-RAID for example) for high end systems.

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[Jpbtennisman]

Note that, benchmarks aside, (Darren has noted before how benchmarks are often artificial, and he's pretty damn smart) in most REAL WORLD scenarios the new P4/DDR333 chipsets should just about match RDRAM, and it's a helluva lot cheaper than RDRAM

So for low end look into SDRAM or DDR266..high end get DDR333 or RDRAM.

But I agree with Darren; there's really no point in buying a Socket 423 board now.

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