Sempron Bus Speeds

[russ0r]

Hey

Quick question: I've managed to pick up one of these 64-bit semprons on the cheap. I'm buying a barebones system & RAM to go with it from here... I notice its a lot cheaper to buy 667Mhz DDR2 than the 800Mhz DDR2... the Sempron I'm looking at is rated at an 800Mhz FSB, will I notice a significant performance hit if I use 667Mhz DDR2 with it?

Cheers

 

[Tute]

No, the Sempron actually uses a 200MHz FSB I believe, so DDR2-400 will be the stock speed.

You can either overclock the Sempron to bring it closer to DDR2-667, or tighten the timings on the RAM.

 

[russ0r]

Are you sure?
I thought only Intels were quad data pumped :O

 

[Tute]

Well the AMD chips aren't "quad pumped" in the same way as the Intel ones... but to get the actual FSB you still have to divide the claimed one by four.

To this day AMD have never released a chip with an FSB faster than 200MHz.

 

[boulton]

Er, if the sempron uses a 200MHz bus and there aren't any amd chips with faster than a 200 MHz bus then all AMD chips run with ddr2 400? No, my 4600+ has a 200MHz bus and runs alongside ddr2 800.

200MHz side by side would be sdram at 200, 200MHz with ddr ram would be ram at 400, and with ddr2 it's 800. Really though, you won't notice much of a hit, but you can buy 2 gigs of the ddr2 800 ocz ram for less than £30 which will be far better than spending £10 less on only 1 gig ddr2 667 ram.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

Your 4600 is not running 1:1 with that memory, Tute is right.

Edit: If you're just getting a Sempron then just get cheapest memory you can, PC5300 would be fine.

 

[Cob]

Hey

Quick question: I've managed to pick up one of these 64-bit semprons on the cheap. I'm buying a barebones system & RAM to go with it from here... I notice its a lot cheaper to buy 667Mhz DDR2 than the 800Mhz DDR2... the Sempron I'm looking at is rated at an 800Mhz FSB, will I notice a significant performance hit if I use 667Mhz DDR2 with it?

Cheers

Which socket is it?

Didn't socket 754 have an 800mhz HT bus?

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

754 was 200 * 4 though? I remember having to drop it to 3 when overclocking or the mobo would crap out.

 

[Cob]

Yeah.


Tho I didn't realise that the AM2 Semprons run off an 800/1600mhz HT too.