Which RAM for E6600?

russ0r

russ0r

russ0r

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Hey.
Buying one of these little beasties for my new system, with a view to overclock.

Just wondering which speed RAM I should be using with it? I noticed it has a 1066Mhz FSB, but have seen a lot of people using 800Mhz RAM with it. Is this gonna have a significant performance impact?

Cheers.

Russ.
 
The FSB figures quoted are all very confusing.

The CPU actually runs at 266MHz FSB, which is then multiplied up internally by the CPU multiplier (9 in the E6600 = 2400MHz) to give the CPU's rated speed.

It then communicates with the Northbridge using a 4x multiplied bus speed (4 x 266=1066MHz)

But it communicates with the RAM controller on a 2x multiplied bus speed so you actually only need 533MHz RAM to run 'normally'.

Hopefully you are still with me!

What RAM you want really depends on how hard you want to overclock and what motherboard you want to use.

The most popular overclocking boards - the ones based on the Intel P965 chipset - only run 'positive' dividers so you cannot run the base RAM slower than the base CPU FSB.

As an example;

266MHz CPU E6600 = 2394MHz = 533MHz RAM
267MHz CPU E6600 = 2403MHz = 534MHz RAM
333MHz CPU E6600 = 2997MHz = 667MHz RAM (PC5300)
400MHz CPU E6600 = 3600MHz = 800MHz RAM (PC6400)

So you can see why people are only running 800MHz RAM with the E6600's.

Obviously, if you use an E6300 then you want faster RAM to reach the above CPU speeds;

450MHz CPU E6300 = 3150MHz = 900MHz RAM (PC7200)
500MHz CPU E6300 = 3500MHz = 1000MHz RAM (PC8000)

Which is why the extremely fast RAM is available.

The other type of motherboard is usually based on the NVidia C55 Northbridge chipset (650i or 680i) or the ATI RD600 chipset and these allow you to set the RAM and CPU base FSB's separately, at which point you can buy any RAM you like and run it flat out irrespective of overclocking.

Intel systems don't suffer the same performance hit when paired with slow RAM that AMD Athlon 64 systems seemed to, but good, fast, RAM will always be useful.

Personally, I don't see the point in paying for anything more than PC6400 (800MHz) at the moment, although when the 1333MHz processors start to appear, PC7200 and PC8000 RAM will be increasingly useful for overclocking.

There is some Patriot PC7200 RAM in the Clearance section at the moment that is an absolute bargain at £100+VAT and that would do you very well indeed.
 
Great post thanks, The ram you have highlighted in link running at 900Mhz would this work on a 800mhz board as I have been looking at the OCUK value 2 gig pack and this is around the same price.

Would it just run at a slower speed or is it not compatable??

Also persume it is a better product/make etc....
 
Claire Drew said:
Great post thanks, The ram you have highlighted in link running at 900Mhz would this work on a 800mhz board as I have been looking at the OCUK value 2 gig pack and this is around the same price.

Would it just run at a slower speed or is it not compatable??

Also persume it is a better product/make etc....
Click to expand...

Theoretically it'll work in any motherboard, but you may not be able to exploit the full speed. What's the motherboard?

Patriot is one of those brands that comes in and out of fashion. About this time last year they got some very good Elpida chips (as used by GeIL) and even the PC5300 stuff overclocks extremely well (http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=148281). I'm pretty certain the clearance RAM is the tail-end of the stock that OcUK bought in last summer so it will be pretty good stuff, even if you go for the PC5300 stuff, but the PC7200 is excellent RAM and it looks very cool too.

I've had the OcUK Value RAM and it's also very good, but as it's £3 more than the GeIL, I'd buy the GeIL at the moment if you decide not to go for the Patriot.
 
My motherboard is a classy one lol, its a Alive NF4G-DVI from Asrock.

Think the ram I have at the moment is cheap and holding back my overclock.

Board only supports 800mhz at the moment.
 
Claire Drew said:
My motherboard is a classy one lol, its a Alive NF4G-DVI from Asrock.

Think the ram I have at the moment is cheap and holding back my overclock.

Board only supports 800mhz at the moment.
Click to expand...

As I understand it, the RAM need not hold back your overclock as you can set it to be a lower speed than it is, so that when it ramps up with the CPU it never exceeds it rated speed

For example;

You have 266MHz (DDRII533) RAM and when you overclock by 20% the overclock fails because of the RAM.

If you set the RAM to be 200MHz (DDRII400) in the BIOS then even with a 20% overclock the RAM will only be running at 240/480MHz which is inside it's rated speed.

If you put the PC7200 RAM in your machine and selected the 400MHz (DDRII800) setting it would let you overclock by 20% and still be inside it's rated speed. If you set it to be 333MHz (DDRII667) then you could overclock by 45% and still be within rated speeds.

The Hard[OCP] review says you can run the RAM asynchronously, but I can't find that option in the manual, so I think you'll be stuck with underclocking the RAM pre-overclock in order to make sure the RAM isn't running too fast when you max out the CPU.

Just as a matter of interest, what have you got the Overclock Mode set to under CPU configuration?
 
The pc is not clocked at the moment as I have just put Vista Home Premium on and wanted to make sure all was fine with that. I have struggled to increase the speed anything above 100mhz without crashing XP in past.

I have not done any clocking of a CPU b4 and realy dont understand a lot of the technicat stuff even after reading the clocking post at top of overclocking section (not very clever). I have had very good clocks out of my GFX card as that is very simple.

The ram I have is a very cheap and to be honest a *rappy make (never heard of it).

So thought of getting some decent ram and then having a 10th crack of trying to clock my CPU. Plus I am running a standard CPU heatsink so temps will not be the best when I start clocking
 
Having read the manual and read a couple of reviews of that board, I reckon that looks like it has potential to be a good overclocking motherboard as you have full control over the PCI/PCIe bus locks and a good range of voltage controls.

If you like - make a new thread in overclocking and I'll talk you through what I would do to start an overclock on that board. If it doesn't work then you're no further back, are you?
 
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