New 2 Gig

Bri62

Bri62

Bri62

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Joined
6 Oct 2004
Posts
684
Location
Widnes, Cheshire
I am looking at getting 2 Gig shortly just got a question i thought you guys might be able to help me out on......what is better pc4000 @ 3-4-4-8 or pc3200 @ 2-3-2-5 on a divider to enable higher fsb ?
 
That's a tough question to answer. I was originally lead to believe that timings were much more important that FSB now that the memory controler is on the CPU, but i've certainly found that FSB still makes a hugh difference. I was running my ram at something like 186 on a 133 divider to get the most of my opty 144, but I decided to just see what would happen if I went back up to 166. In all fairness my timings were not great at 186 just 2-3-3-6 (i wasn't bothering to fiddle) and they remained the same when I went back to 166, so this is only a differentiation between FSB speeds. But anyway, going from 186 to 240 FSB took 3 mins of my superpi32m time. I was expecting it to be better, but that was a bigger jump than going from 2.4 to 2.6ghz.

I think what you really want is ram that will get somwhere in the 220-250 region but keep decent timings in the region of 2-3-2-6 to 2.5-3-3-6, then go with a small divider to go that last mile. The PC4000 that gets 3-4-4-8 i'd rule out. Instead go for somthing that can be pushed a bit in terms of FSB (not necessarily to 270+, but at least 220-230) but does so with good timings. I highly recommend the XMS3500 but as you're using a DFI i'd plump for low latency PC3200. OZC platinum is pretty good and does well on those boards from what i've read. You should get similar results to me.
 
man_from_uncle said:
That's a tough question to answer. I was originally lead to believe that timings were much more important that FSB now that the memory controler is on the CPU, but i've certainly found that FSB still makes a hugh difference. I was running my ram at something like 186 on a 133 divider to get the most of my opty 144, but I decided to just see what would happen if I went back up to 166. In all fairness my timings were not great at 186 just 2-3-3-6 (i wasn't bothering to fiddle) and they remained the same when I went back to 166, so this is only a differentiation between FSB speeds. But anyway, going from 186 to 240 FSB took 3 mins of my superpi32m time. I was expecting it to be better, but that was a bigger jump than going from 2.4 to 2.6ghz.

I think what you really want is ram that will get somwhere in the 220-250 region but keep decent timings in the region of 2-3-2-6 to 2.5-3-3-6, then go with a small divider to go that last mile. The PC4000 that gets 3-4-4-8 i'd rule out. Instead go for somthing that can be pushed a bit in terms of FSB (not necessarily to 270+, but at least 220-230) but does so with good timings. I highly recommend the XMS3500 but as you're using a DFI i'd plump for low latency PC3200. OZC platinum is pretty good and does well on those boards from what i've read. You should get similar results to me.
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Thanks thats perfect i was either looking at the Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3500LL Pro TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (MY-093-CS)
or the OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
what do you think out of these two?
 
Well, the answer is simple if you plan to use that DFi board (and personally I would keep using it as there is little out there that is as good let alone better), go for the OCZ. DFI boards don't seem to take too kindly to corsair for some reason. If you pop over to DFI-street they'll tell you all about it. In fact if you pop over there and manage to find a poster called Sharp he'll give you about as good advice as you can get on what works best with that board. I think that the OCZ will be up there though.

If for some reason you go with a different board, then I certainly can personally vouch for the XMS3500LL. So far it has been dynamite. I ran it for a couple of months on an old XP-M system and it tore strips off my old Kingston and now i've got it in this rig and i haven't found a way to make it the limiting point on my overclock.
 
OCZ Platinum PC3200 (infiniteon chips?) tops out at 214Mhz at 2-3-2-5, however, slow the CAS to 2.5 and it does 236Mhz. Unfortunately, increasing the timings further has minimal impact and at 3-3-3-8 only another 2Mhz could be gained.
Avoid Corsair as compatibility with DFI boards is not guaranteed.
 
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