oc'ing mushkin basic 2700 ddr memory and other questions!

[oxymoron]

i was wondering about overclocking my muskin memory and settings.
1st thing: is it worth overclocking 333 ddr memory to 400 ddr? the timings of the cas increase from 2.5 to 3.0 as soon as i pass 170.
2nd thing: do the other numbers mean (ras, cas, ect)? i know cas lagency is improtant....
3rd thing: do u know if my basic muskin pc2700 will operate w/ cas lagency @ 2 instead of 2.5?
the other 5 questions are off topic:
1) are there any good modems out there? is the price of a 'good modem' justified? i going to try to talk to my dad about getting cable, but i was wondering just incase he says no.
2) the s-bracket. i have a msi k7n2-L and i was wondering if (and where) i can buy the s-bracket. i have the pins for it, so i think i can use it...
3) if i cant get the s-bracket, then i will probably get a sound card. i was looking at the turtle beach santa cruse b/c its cheapcheapcheap. is that any good? i am asking these questions b/c want surround sound and line in. (getting ati aiw 8500dv)
4) any recomendations for a fanbus controler? my sys sounds LIKE A VACUUM CLEANER.
5)how do u convert a hard drive form fat32 to ntfs? if i did, will it increase hdd space (its a 60 gig hd, it says 55 gb).
thats all of my questions (i think ) so, um yeah.... thanks for imput...
my sys.
-AMD Athlon XP 1800+ @ 1800~1940 (it varys b/c i using stock cooling and temp can get to 61~62C) via 154~170 fsb
MSI K7N2-L
WD 60gig hd
maxtor 8 gig hd
48/16/48 optorite
4/4/24 pacific digital corp.
future case (i dont konw who they are either )
CRAP sis 305 graphic card
CRAP modem
some fans that came w/ case and old tt vol. 5 fan

thx for ur imput....
and i know i asked 1 2 many questions, but i didnt want to put 1200 posts out there...

[BuddhaTB]

Answers to Off Topic Questions
1. The best modems are made by US Robotics/3COM. They have been at the top of the modem industry for quite some time now. Also make sure you get a PCI modem instead of a winmodem. Other good brands include zoom, diamond, and creative. I own a creative 56k v.90 modem for awhile now and have been pretty happy with its connection speeds.

3. Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is a very good sound card for the money. I would get it if you can find it for a good price. It's one of the sound cards I was looking into before deciding on a sound blaster audigy 2 for my system. It should work well for your surround sound and will be a good upgrade over your onboard sound.

4. I personally want this for my system buy waiting for the price to go down on it.
http://www.vantecusa.com/nxp101.html

Also look into this
http://www.vantecusa.com/nxp201.html

[dodecahedron]

1. The best modems are made by US Robotics/3COM. They have been at the top of the modem industry for quite some time now. Also make sure you get a PCI modem instead of a winmodem. Other good brands include zoom, diamond, and creative. I own a creative 56k v.90 modem for awhile now and have been pretty happy with its connection speeds.

that is more easily said than done.
nearly all PCI modems are Winmodems (suck suck sucksuck!)
i ended up buying an external US Robotics 56K serial modem (all external serial modems are real modems, not winmodems).

if you really want, i'll dig up a few URLs for you that contain info about Winmodems + a sort of database. ask if you want this.

[cfitz]

5)how do u convert a hard drive form fat32 to ntfs? if i did, will it increase hdd space (its a 60 gig hd, it says 55 gb).

Here is how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... s%3B307881

However, the reason your drive appears to be small is marketing flim-flam combined with prefix ambiguity. The drive manufacturer specified the size of the drive using 1 G = 10^9, while Windows reports the drive size using 1 G = 2^30. You can read more starting here if you want:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 5203#55203

cfitz

[Johnny Casaba]

Regarding the soundcard, CircuitCity has that card on sale this week for $39.99 after a $40.00 MIR. I dont believe it was listed in the circular but go to website and u will see it.

[Solr_Flare]

In regards to the memory questions

1) If taking it to DDR 400 is making you jump to CAS 3.0 then don't do it, the performance difference is not worth it.

2) I am not wholy familiar with RAS but I can tell you a bit about CAS, in general, the lower oyu can get that CAS the better performance you can get. In a recent study done results indicated that running at CAS 2.0 instead of 2.5 can result in as much as a 15-30% increase in performance at the exact same speeds. A lot of other testers can pretty much back up these numbers. I believe the performance difference between running at 2.5 and 3.0 is more like 25-35%

So, when you ask about jumping to DDR400 levels but jumping to 3.0 CAS, while you woul be running at a higher speed, the loss in performance by going to CAS 3.0 would completely offset it if not make it slower than running at 170 with 2.5.

3) You may very well be able to get it to run at CAS 2.0 at DDR333 levels. In fact, I'd recommend giving it a try and seeing if it will go as that would be a nice boost in performance for you. Mushkin tends to be pretty durable.

Now a few other tips for you. If you don't have it already, do a google search and download memtest86. This is a program you run by booting off a floppy an you just set it to run several times. It checks your memory for errors an is a great way to test the stability of your new Memory speed and CAS settings. Also, if you are running with more than one memory module in your system keep the following in mind:

A) Systems with multiple memory modules tend to be harder to overclock than a single module.

B) If you have 2 different brands of memory in your system, your performance will be limited by the slowest module in your memory bank.

Good luck

[dodecahedron]

do a google search and download memtest86.

www.memtest86.com

[oxymoron]

good replys thx 4 help

[dodecahedron]

2nd thing: do the other numbers mean (ras, cas, ect)? i know cas lagency is improtant....

http://www.rojakpot.com/bog.aspx