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Help Needed on RAM !

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Help Needed on RAM !

Postby TidusTheCoolest on Tue Sep 09, 2003 3:38 pm

Gonna have a Barton 2500+ (fsb 333mhz) paired with ABIT NF7-S . About the RAM , I'm eyeing on (2 x 256MB) Hyper X 333 Mhz (2-2-2-5) and (2 x 256 MB) Hyper X 400 Mhz (2-3-3-7) . Which one will give better performance ? Also , can somebody explain what those 2-2-2-5 mean ? Is higher value or lower value better ?
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Postby DReborn on Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:46 pm

hi there...basically those numbers are "timings" on your ram (also called latency). Rougly speaking, the lower the better. Go for the 400Mhz...you can also lower the timings but it's better to have the larger bandwith to play around with. But I would not go lower than PC3200 (preferably PC3500) with your setup. Hope that helps!
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Postby TidusTheCoolest on Thu Sep 11, 2003 5:16 pm

So ur sayin' I should proceed with the 400 Mhz RAM ? But the CPU is FSB 333 , isn't it wiser to chosse RAM with 333 mhz rating as well ? Isn't it gonna cause conflict if I choose 400 mhz RAM ?
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Postby TheWizard on Thu Sep 11, 2003 11:28 pm

FSB and RAM speed are two different variables. Find out what RAM the board supports. If it only supports 333MHZ (PC2700) RAM then get that, if it's cheaper than 400MHz (PC3200) RAM. The 400MHz RAM should be backward compatible, therefore if the price is the same as PC2700 or less (maybe? you never know) then get the PC3200. It couldn't hurt in case you upgrade to a better board in the future.
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Postby TidusTheCoolest on Fri Sep 12, 2003 11:54 am

The board does support DDR 400 . I'm confused , the guy at the shop told me that if I wanna use DDR 400 , I have to OC my CPU to FSB 400 first . is this true ?
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Postby TheWizard on Fri Sep 12, 2003 8:01 pm

Apparently, the guy at the shop is an idiot. :roll:

Do you really think ABIT would produce a motherboard that supports 400MHz RAM if it was somehow limited to the 333MHz FSB? The two are completely different variables.
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Postby Stoner on Sun Sep 14, 2003 2:41 am

TidusTheCoolest wrote:The board does support DDR 400 . I'm confused , the guy at the shop told me that if I wanna use DDR 400 , I have to OC my CPU to FSB 400 first . is this true ?


What he's saying is since you're running a Barton 2500+, which runs on 333FSB, you should OC it (all you gotta do is change the CPU FSB to 200 in BIOS) to 400FSB so it matches your DDR400 RAM. Sync CPU FSB and RAM FSB is faster than Async.
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