URGENT advice needed on Athlon/Mem speed issue

[Dubbs]

Guys,
Just ordered a DFI motherboard and Athlon 2800 barton with twin 160Gb SATA for raid setup. Here's the prob, currently running an Asus A7266 board with a 1.4 Athlon. As I'm now going to be running a 333Mhz processor does this mean my old memory won't work? I believe it's PC2100 which makes it 200Mhz memory.

URGENT advice needed as I can mod the order for faster memory if I'm quick but don't want to spend the cash if it'll work as I can save up for some Corsair !gb dual jobbies later.

Thanks in advance....

 

[RandomBastard]

Guys,
Just ordered a DFI motherboard and Athlon 2800 barton with twin 160Gb SATA for raid setup. Here's the prob, currently running an Asus A7266 board with a 1.4 Athlon. As I'm now going to be running a 333Mhz processor does this mean my old memory won't work? I believe it's PC2100 which makes it 200Mhz memory.

URGENT advice needed as I can mod the order for faster memory if I'm quick but don't want to spend the cash if it'll work as I can save up for some Corsair !gb dual jobbies later.

Thanks in advance....

Likewise dont worry pc2100 memory works fine with a 2800xp barton (i have a asus A7Vn8X)

 

[xane]

PC2100 is 266Mhz.

I was running a Barton XP 2500+ (333Mhz) with 512MB of PC2100 (266Mhz) for a short while, on my Asus A7N8X, no problems. Upgraded later to 1Gb of PC2700 (333Mhz).

What DFI motherboard is it ? You should check that the chipset can handle different FSB and RAM speeds.

 

[Dubbs]

SO I'm guessing it's just slow access times yes? If so then that's fine for me until I can afford a gig or two of high qualtiy stuff and then overclock 400+!!

Spent £400+ today on that little lot..... gonna be a while before I can save for the next lot! (wedding in July too so have to be stealthy with the purchases )

 

[Shovel]

The memory should work, but you'll find that you'll get better performance with 333Mhz parts.

For reference by the way, PC2100 is actually 266Mhz DDR, not 200Mhz. The ratings are as follows:

PC1600 - 200Mhz
PC2100 - 266Mhz
PC2700 - 333Mhz
PC3200 - 400Mhz

 

[Dubbs]

Yep, dunno why I put 200.... this old boy is losing his marbles (at 30 I think that's worrying...!)

It's the DFI Lanparty NFII Ultra-B

I was looking at the ABIT MAX range (with the OTES) or MSI's but the DFI seems to perform well and has everything I need at a good price.

 

[xane]

PC1600 is 200Mhz not 233Mhz.

 

[Shovel]

Oh, whoops. Thanks Xane - /edits.

 

[Xavier]

The benefits of running CPU and memory synchronously aren't just down to increased bandwidth and whatnot. One of the reasons Intel try and keep they CPU and RAM synchronous is because their dual-channel chipsets (and boards like the nForce2 with an AthlonXP) exhibit a 'memory interleave' effect which can mean more performance-wise than the leap from CAS2.5 to CAS2.


The best way to demonstrate it is simply raising the FSB a couple of Mhz, while many benchmarks benefit from the <1% bandwidth increment, others take a performance hit with CPU & Memory running asynchronously.

Xav