Get a P4 motherboard that supportes DDR333 (PC2700). Then buy the "Extreme" PC2700 memory from www.corsair.com. It has a significant performance-enhancing feature: 2.0 cycle latency versus the more standard 2.5. This high-performance Corsair memory only costs a few bucks more than standard PC2700 sticks. (I'm sure other people make CL2.0 sticks, I just haven't found them anywhere for purchase.)
Any decent white-box manufacturer should be able to find you PC2700 DDR with CAS2.0. Ryan Malayter Sr. Network & Database Administrator Bank Administration Institute Chicago, Illinois, USA PGP Key: http://www.malayter.com/pgp-public.txt ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Twas a woman who drove me to drink. I never had the courtesy to thank her. -W.C. Fields -----Original Message----- From: Russel Brooks [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 9:55 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Mersenne: christmas computer system? I'm giving my brother's family a new computer for christmas. He'll buy it from a local (to him) 'white box' pc store and I'll pay for it. I am a little concerned about performance because the pc will probably be running GIMPS and I'd like to get my money's worth. It's easy to request a P4 in the 2.0-2.5 range and 256M-512M of memory but I've read of the bottleneck caused by slow memory and the bus between memory and cpu and I don't know what to specify or how to evaluate components in this area or measure performance after the pc is built. Any comments or suggestions? I want them to have a fast machine but not on the bleeding (expensive) edge. Other than GIMPS I'm sure my nephew will be the heaviest load when he plays games on the new machine. I think I should also request the video card has all of it's own memory, right? I don't want the video to share the main memory for performance reasons, right? Cheers... Russ DIGITAL FREEDOM! --> http://www.eff.org/ ________________________________________________________________________ _ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers _________________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.ndatech.com/mersenne/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers