First thing first, let me tell our American and israeli friends on this forum that we, in Europe, grieve as much as they do the loss of the bright and daring crew of Columbia. I'm in the process of getting and selecting a new set of equipment (Dell) and I still wonder what is preferable : having 1 Gb of 333 MHz DDR SDRam or 512 Mb of 1066 RDRAM ? don't tell me 1 Gb of RDram, that I know ! The question is of course specifically FS related and I may add that I'd run FS alone on the new machine, using a laptop as a "sidekick" for displaying maps and/or chat windows and any other programs. Memory against throughput, is there any difference in handling heavy AI traffic, clouds density, line of vision, extended textures etc. ?thanksD

Visit the following websites:http://www.corsairmemory.com/http://www.crucial.com/Generally, a MOBO is only going to use one type of memory not both. So it would depend on the MOBO's capabilities.

Dell offers (well "sells" is the right word actually :-) two types of P4 machines, one with RDRam and one with SDram. I know the differences between both, technically and price wise.The point is, knowing FS idiosyncrasies wether I'd be better off having for the same price more memory (SDram)or more throughput (RDram).Dominique

RDRAM looks to have not much of a future, so I'd go with the DDR. RDRAM is a bit faster, but don't worry about that. DDR is a far better choice IMHO.

Dominique, I don't know who has really done the benchmarking of systems with high front side bus bandwidth versus lower, but I can tell you my philosophy on building my new machine is based on the concept of making sure the entire system is as free of potential bottlenecks as possible.To this end, I have purchased the following components:1. ASUS P4G8X-Deluxe This mainboard support dual-channel DDR memory, and along with the higher end P4 processors, is very overclockable. The net result will be a memory bandwidth of about 4.6 to 5.0 GB/sec. This is comparable to RDRAM solutions, but in fact may outperform them as far as memory (and total system throughput) WHEN THE FSB is overclocked. Comparing a i850e based mainboard using PC 1066 RDRAM against this board (using Granite Bay 7205 intel) at default clock speeds they both have a theoretical bandwidth of 4.2GB/sec. As a point of interest, the INTERNAL bandwidth of the P4 is 4.2 GB/sec. So I like the idea of having the memory bandwidth be the same as the CPU bandwidth. Final conclusion: both RDRAM and DUAL-CHANNEL DDR memory will perform similarly. I chose the Granite Bay board to accomodate AGP8x, Hyperthreading, etc, which the i850e does not support.2. Seagate X15.3 SCSI U320 HDDs. These drives are super fast (literally!) and tend to use the CPU less than their ATA counterparts. I decided to do this after reading posts of other FS2002 simmers who had noticed marked improvements in "stutters" after switching to this drive system. Also, try running System Monitor sometime and chose drive read data: you will see very frequent accesses to the HDD system that may (or may not) correlate with some stuttering activity in FS2002. These accesses on my system (512mb SDRAM) occur every few seconds, vary in size, but generally are about 300kb to several mb. The HD access lights DO NOT come on during these brief disk read I/O's.3. Radeon 9700 Pro: sports the HIGHEST bandwidth of any video card to date at around 20mb/sec. I will probably disable AGP texture buffering and just use video ram if possible.4. 2x 512mb Crucial PC2700 DDR memory. Even though Granite Bay boards do not require PC2700, I bought this to make sure the memory could tolerate overclocking of the FSB. As for the future of RDRAM: i'm not sure what bearing this has on a decision for PC parts. None of this stuff is good for much more than 3 years anyway. The one exception: the Seagate drives are "enterprise class" drives with 1.2 Million MTBF rating and a full 5y warranty. SiS is coming out with a chipset that uses PC1200 RDRAM: I think PC2700 or higher DDR, or upcoming DDR II, will outperform it WHEN IN DUAL CHANNEL mode. So . . . if you go DDR, buy a dual-channel supported mainboard. That's it!Noel

So how fast does that puppy run? Must be really fast.Some bad news, DDR2 won't be publically available till 2005.

Noel,Thanks for the VERY detailed and informative info. Seems like you know your hardware. I am going to be building a new box soon also and it can be enough to make your head hurt when looking at all the choices. I have been wrestling with the issue of RDRAM vs DDR on the P4. Can you explain what exactly "Duel Channel" DDR is and does? I was under the impression that it may mean you use two chips vs using one?What kind of performance increase does it give? Also what P4 are you going to be using on this board? I am looking to probably go with a P4 2.4. WOuld this board be overkill for this P4?Thanks

Dual DDR basically makes your RAM twice as fast. If you get this board, something higher than 2.4 would be nice, but not absolutely necessary.

...for taking the time of your long and substantiated answer. Much appreciated.An interesting view point on dual channel DDR and RdRam : http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,560093,00.aspIt's a pity that FS is never used to benchmarck hardware config. !Dominique

look here http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,560093,00.aspDominique

Thanks Dominique! Great info!!

Hi Dominique,Be careful of older articles like that however... As all things in PC land go, times move too fast for forward thinking articles such as applied there.DDR400 *is* the mainstream product it didn't look like it would be six months ago. While JEDEC was pushing for DDRII (at 400MHz) to be the memory standard in early 2003 instead of the existing DDRI at 400MHz, that hasn't panned out. . DDR400 will be with us for the forseeable future now since it has been widely adopted by all of the main chipset and memory manufacturers (Intel being the most influential in that decision with their upcomming [link:www.businessweek.com/technology/cnet/stories/982630.htm]Springdale and Canterwood chipsets). This finally brings some much needed stability back into the memory market after the past year of questions.Take care,Elrond

Keep an eye on www.SimHQ.com as they are always running reviews on hardware--and they do use FS2002 and several other sims for benchmarking.I am awaiting shipment of these very delayed Granite Bay boards from ASUS or Gigabyte. These are all very decent, top performers now and fully loaded with all the latest on-board features. There is no question more power is forthcoming, but at this time I believe they are tops for stability, overclockability, and features. I also subscribe to the notion that a system that overclocks well is just plain more likely to be more stable at default speeds as well. They also use inexpensive DDR memory from Kingston, Crucial, and most of the other better brand memory: PC2100 at $50 or less for 256mb. I purchased 2x 512mb of the PC2700 to add in some extra stability for overclocking the FSB with. I am going to install Win2K Pro.As soon as I get it up, running and debugged, I will post results. Can't wait! Hopefully the P4G8X Deluxe will ship Friday . . . but I'm not holding my breath!Also, I blundered on the memory bandwidth of the Radeon 9700 Pro: 19.8GB/sec. Only off by a factor of 1000!Noel