What memory?

mcaldo · 1 Aug 2007 at 18:16

Hi,

I've decided to go for the EVGA 680i board and want to buy about 4gb of ram, what do you suggest I go for? I've been looking at two 2gb sticks of OCZ 6400 it's £200. Has anyone used this memory or can anyone suggest something else that may be faster.

Also, how easy is it to overclock memory as I have never done it before?

Cheers!

jak731 · 1 Aug 2007 at 18:52

If you've got a bit more money to spare and intend to overclock you might consider these. Very fast memory.

Marse · 1 Aug 2007 at 19:31

mcaldo said:
......how easy is it to overclock memory as I have never done it before?

I’m trying to sort out clocking and I think the basics are fairly straightforward.

There are guides here and elsewhere but at its most basic it seems fairly straightforward in theory.

If you take a Q6600 with a clock speed of 2.4 GHz and using its highest multiplier of 9 you need Ram with a speed of 267 to achieve 2.4 GHz ie 9 x 267.

Match the Q6600 with PC5300 memory which has a speed of 334 and with the CPU multiplier set at 9 you would have a nominal speed of 9 x 334 ie 3 GHz.

In order to achieve this, or something close to it, you manually set the Ram speed progressively higher than say 267 until you either achieve this speed or you have stability problems and/or overheating issues. An after-market Heatsink is desirable if not essential.

Assuming you get this far it seems to get rather more involved thereafter but it seems by choosing the right Ram you can, with luck, exceed the clock speed of the CPU without too much tinkering as outlined above.

Either way it seems a good starting point.

If only I could get hold of a Q6600 GO CPU I might be able to speak from experience.
As it is I hope those more knowledgeable than I will correct me in the above if I have misunderstood some or all of this.

mcaldo · 2 Aug 2007 at 13:03

jak731 said:
If you've got a bit more money to spare and intend to overclock you might consider these. Very fast memory.

They look good, but I'd prefer 2gb sticks instead of 1gb ones as I want to expand further when I save some more pennies (student) :-)

Why should I go for them over the OCZ ones?

Oh, and 'marse' thankyou very much for your information! :-)

Talrinys · 2 Aug 2007 at 15:36

You're not gonna be able to clock 2gb modules as much as others, that shouldn't hold you back from buying them though, just make sure you get DDR2-800 at least off the bat.

mcaldo · 2 Aug 2007 at 16:51

If i remember correctly the board supports up to 1333mhz. Those OCZ modules are 800mhz, i am struggling to find anything better in this sea of memory! :-(

Help!!

Talrinys · 2 Aug 2007 at 22:20

1333mhz would be the FSB i believe, which is quadpumped, that being 333x4, whereas DDR2 is dualpumped, that is 333x2 on stock speeds, which actually only requires DDR2-667, on DDR2-800 RAM this leaves you at least enough headroom to get to 1600MHZ FSB