P4 3.06 pricing questions...

[kg2k]

I have a couple questions. First, do you think that the price on the Pentium 4 3.06 CPU has pretty much bottomed out at this point? I mean at least in the sense that they won’t drop significantly during the next big price drops. Also, anyone know if Intel has stopped manufacturing them? I am just wondering because already the P4 3.0C and P4 3.0E are typically less expensive. I figure there must be more demand for the 533Mhz FSB CPU, especially with the high RAM costs, and if they did stop manufacturing that certainly isn’t going to change.

I have an Asus P4PE motherboard and was pretty much planning on upgrading my P4 2.4B to a P4 3.06 at some point (soon) since I have a GB of PC2700 RAM and surely wouldn’t want to upgrade the RAM too, if I can help it.

I could put an 800Mhz P4 in my board with a BIOS update but they state that the RAM must be PC3200 to accommodate an 800Mhz FSB CPU. I'm assuming you can’t clock the RAM under 200Mhz when running an 800Mhz FSB and I doubt very much my two mixed sticks of 166Mhz RAM would run at 200Mhz. So I guess that leaves me with two options, spend $450+ on new RAM and a CPU or spend about $220 and get the 533Mhz FSB CPU and just deal with it. Any suggestions or input? Should I wait a bit longer and see if the prices come down? That was certainly my hope.

[Uncle Bob]

Just wonder'en. Why go to the expence of a P4 3.06? That's only
a gain of 0.660, over what you have. I have a P4 3.06 CPU in
my rig. I had a 2.4B. I also went to Win XP. Things are faster.
But thats the XP not the CPU. I have 1.5 gb ram PC2700. I've
seen the P4 3.06 for as low as $229.00 and up to $290.00+.

[kg2k]

Well, I would really like the benefits of hyperthreading for one. I tend to do a lot of multi-tasking. Also, I like to do some gaming and I have a Radeon 9800 Pro video card that I figure could take advantage of the extra CPU horsepower. I wish I would have invested in PC3200 early on then it wouldn't be such an issue and I would go with the P4 3.0C.

[HeadBand]

it is possible to run the ram at fsb-33 that would probobally be the most affordable solution

[kg2k]

Originally posted by HeadBand
it is possible to run the ram at fsb-33 that would probobally be the most affordable solution

Is that for certain? I was thinking the same thing initially, that I could just clock the RAM back to 333, but according to this page http://www.asus.com.tw/support/cpusupport/fsb800.aspx at Asus’ website you cannot run 800Mhz CPU without PC3200 no matter what. Although I can under-clock my RAM to 266 when running a 533 FSB so you would certainly think that 333 would be an option at 800Mhz. If you look at the chart on that page you will see that they show support for PC2100 at a 533 FSB but they also show that the board doesn’t support PC3200 at 533 FSB, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. I would hate to buy a P4 C processor and then find out my board won’t allow me to clock the RAM under 400Mhz.

[kg2k]

Well, I did some google searching and finally (not an easy topic to search for) found something pertinent to my dilemma. As I mentioned earlier the Asus website states that in order to run at 800 FSB you MUST have PC3200 RAM. Someone was discussing that particular issue in this thread http://forums.extremeoverclocking.co...ad.php?t=98633

The notes on ASUS' site say that it won't boot with anything slower than PC3200, and I found that to be true.

And then later…

There is a MEMORY FREQUENCY option under the processor settings. However, the only option I have to choose from is AUTO. I cannot change it to anything else because nothing else is listed. Any ideas?

Seems kind of strange but apparently if you put a P4 C processor in this board it will no longer allow you to change the memory frequency. As it is right now, running at 533 FSB, I can change the memory frequncy timings.