Am I being a Noob?

Alty · 5 Mar 2007 at 13:26

Hiya guys,

am looking to build a new PC for a mate and am going for the following:

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 (1066mhz)
4Gb Corsair Dominator (1066mhz)
Nvidia 8800GTX
A mobo with 1066mhz FSB & ......

are there any mobos that support 1066mhz DDR2? The highest I see seem to be stating 800mhz DDR2. Or am I simply missing something? I would like there to be some uniformity keeping to 1066mhz or is this not possible?

Any advice appreciated.

WJA96 · 5 Mar 2007 at 14:24

No, you're not being a NOOB, but it is very easy to get confused by all the various figures. That RAM will let you run true 1:1 with the CPU and all the high performance motherboards will support RAM that fast.

DDR2 would normally run 1:2 with the CPU FSB so the PC4300 RAM is 533MHz to run 1:2 with a 1066MHz CPU (because Intel use a quad speed bus with a 266MHz chip - see how confusing it is?)

That RAM is truly mental though. Good luck.

Alty · 5 Mar 2007 at 15:34

can anyone be kind enough to suggest a mobo which supports 1066mhz DDR2? It has to also support the nvidia 8800 GTX cards tho and not ATI's Crossfire.

Many Thanks

WJA96 · 5 Mar 2007 at 16:05

Alty said:
can anyone be kind enough to suggest a mobo which supports 1066mhz DDR2? It has to also support the nvidia 8800 GTX cards tho and not ATI's Crossfire.

Many Thanks

1066MHz DDR2 is only PC8500 and most motherboards support that, although you have to set the speeds manually because they will always identify themselves as slower RAM to ensure they boot up properly at the default 1.8V setting.

If you require an SLi board ie. 2 NVidia graphics cards then anything based on the 680i chipset will support that RAM. So ASUS Striker, ASUS P5N32-E, ASUS P5N32-E Plus, EVGA, BFG, ECS, MSI, Foxconn and Gigabyte generic 680i boards all support that RAM (they are all the same Foxconn motherboard with different stickers on). The 650i boards are a bit more fussy, but the ASUS P5N-E SLi has run overclocked Crucial Anniversary RAM at PC9000 (1200MHz) speeds, so it should work.

As I said before, it's actually more of a challenge finding a quality motherboard that won't run 1066MHz DDR2 RAM than finding one that will. Because of the way RAM standards work, all the motherboards boot the RAM as if it was 667MHz (PC5300) so that they definitely boot with 1.8V (otherwise you could find yourself having to buy cheap RAM, turn up the required voltage to 2.2V or whatever and then shut down and boot up with your PC8500 RAM). Once you have booted *** machine up, then you manually have to set the RAM speed settings and voltages to what you require. The EPP RAM might be a bit smarter, I'm not sure if that can tell the BIOS it's much faster and requires a higher voltage.