Best Ram, Not overclokcing

stickroad said:
This would be a 1:1 Ratio becuase your running the FSB at 400mhz and 6400 stock speeds are 800mhz so (400mhz) is that correct?
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Yes, when running 1:1.
You can use dividers to (typically) run the RAM even faster than than FSB speed.
i.e. if the RAM was capable of it you could run the CPU at 3.6GHz 9x 400MHz but the RAM at 600MHz by using a 2:3 divider.
 
Ah i see thank you so much for explaining everything to me :)

One more thing.

If i get the 6400 memory and dont intend to clock it, A complete waste of money right because not in a million years would that ram run at 800mhz?

Unless i decide to overclock right? :):)
 
stickroad said:
Ah i see thank you so much for explaining everything to me :)

One more thing.

If i get the 6400 memory and dont intend to clock it, A complete waste of money right because not in a million years would that ram run at 800mhz?

Unless i decide to overclock right? :):)
Click to expand...
You don't need to run anything at 800MHz as far as the BIOS goes.
PC2-6400 RAM can be said to be 800MHz although technically it's 400MHz x 2 due to the 'double data rate'.
(Which is why you'll see it rated as '400MHz DDR2-800'.
 
stickroad said:
Well after all that i have decided i will do a bit of overclocking. Hell yeah :)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-085-CR

That

Or

This

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-000-TG
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You can't go wrong with either, both are excellent and equally well-priced.
For "some overclocking" you won't notice any difference at all, both will run 400MHz 4-4-4 with ease and at low voltage (under 2.0V usually) and go on to 500MHz+ with the same timings and a bump in voltage.

It boils down to whichever one you prefer the looks of (subjective, though I find Team's heatspreaders prone to bending - makes no practical difference though) and ease of RMA etc (Crucial may be better in this regard).
 
Ill prob go for the Crucial stuff, for the first few weeks i wont be overclocking just so my machine settles down, and during this time my RAM will only be running at 533mhz?
 
stickroad said:
Ill prob go for the Crucial stuff, for the first few weeks i wont be overclocking just so my machine settles down, and during this time my RAM will only be running at 533mhz?
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Yep - although it will default to the tight stock timings which may take more voltage (2.20V by rating) than the motherboard will set as standard (often 1.80-1.90V)
Best bet is to initially leave everything at 'auto/set by SPD' but ensure the RAM voltage ('Vdimm') is at ~2.00-2.20V.
 
One thing i still dont understand is if i dont touch anything in the bios leave everything as it is which will be AUTO, why wouldn't the RAM default to that Speed so 6400 - 800mhz? just for arguments sake

Yes the CPU will be set at 9x multi 2.4ghz (AUTO) but if that is on auto and the RAM is auto everything should run what it is intended to run at?

Sorry for all the questions but im just finding it a tad hard to take all this in and the way computers ACTUALLY work when it comes to this stuf.

When spending a grand on a pc i want to be sure, and im learning so many new things which is good right lol :)
 
stickroad said:
One thing i still dont understand is if i dont touch anything in the bios leave everything as it is which will be AUTO, why wouldn't the RAM default to that Speed so 6400 - 800mhz? just for arguments sake

Yes the CPU will be set at 9x multi 2.4ghz (AUTO) but if that is on auto and the RAM is auto everything should run what it is intended to run at?

Sorry for all the questions but im just finding it a tad hard to take all this in and the way computers ACTUALLY work when it comes to this stuf.

When spending a grand on a pc i want to be sure, and im learning so many new things which is good right lol :)
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As far as the motherboard BIOS is concerned, the CPU/chipset FSB takes priority so your RAM will be running underclocked (at 266/533MHz).
There may be motherboards that act differently and raise the FSB to match that of the RAM's SPD speed or run the RAM on a divider but I can't say for sure.
 
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If you had an E6600 and just chucked some DDR2-6400 in there on SPD (auto) settings it would run at 800MHz...

What I think they are saying is, intel chipsets typically run at their best performance with the RAM at a 1:1 ratio, so having the FSB at 266 and the RAM at 400MHz (800MHz RAM) (3:4 divider) isn't really going to perform much different to FSB at 266 and RAM at 266 (533MHz RAM) (1:1 divider).
 
nightic said:
As far as the motherboard BIOS is concerned, the CPU/chipset FSB takes priority so your RAM will be running underclocked (at 266/533MHz).
There may be motherboards that act differently and raise the FSB to match that of the RAM's SPD settings or run the RAM on a divider but I can't say for sure.
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All motherboards will run the RAM on a divider to get their rated settings, RAM is generally sold to match these dividers (or the other way around) I don't know a motherboard on earth that would run DDR2-6400 at DDR2-4200 speeds if the FSB was 266MHz (unless manually configured that way by the end user).
 
Rroff said:
If you had an E6600 and just chucked some DDR2-6400 in there on SPD (auto) settings it would run at 800MHz...

What I think they are saying is, intel chipsets typically run at their best performance with the RAM at a 1:1 ratio, so having the FSB at 266 and the RAM at 400MHz (800MHz RAM) (3:4 divider) isn't really going to perform much different to FSB at 266 and RAM at 266 (533MHz RAM) (1:1 divider).
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Could someone please corfirm this :)

Thats very clear :)
 
Rroff said:
All motherboards will run the RAM on a divider to get their rated settings, RAM is generally sold to match these dividers (or the other way around) I don't know a motherboard on earth that would run DDR2-6400 at DDR2-4200 speeds if the FSB was 266MHz (unless manually configured that way by the end user).
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So the Ram WOULD run at 800mhz?
 
I'm pretty much quoting what I'm assuming they are saying with the previous posts...

But it does hold fairly true, the bandwidth benchmarked would differ quite a lot but you'd not likely see much real world performance difference... I'll get some graphs in a bit of my RAM running at 533, 800 and 1066.

Yes the RAM WOULD run at 800MHz.
 
stickroad said:
Could someone please confirm this :)
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No, that's right (what Rroff said) - the mistake on my part was due to my current board (Intel D975XBX2) running the lowest SPD value of the RAM fitted (which happens to be 266MHz, the same as the default CPU/chipset).
However having just now swapped in some PC2-8000 RAM I notice that the speed is raised to 333MHz (the lowest of that RAM's SPD values).
 
stickroad said:
Thats why i asked a few more questions because i thought it was really strange that the Ram wouldn't run at it stock speed. But they do.
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They don't always, as most RAM modules have multiple SPD settings programmed in to them and as such may not run at their 'full' speed one.
 
that is true on some boards it will default to the lowest SPD table values - you will need to make sure the RAM is running at its rated timings and voltage as often these days the RAM has the SPD table written with failsafe values much lower than the ones its sold as.
 
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