Conroe & DDR2 667 vs 800

[Mr Bob]

With an E6600 Conroe build, what kind of performance increase would I expect to see when going from DDR2 667 to DDR2 800?

How will this effect real life performance?

Just trying to understand if the additional performance is worth the money. Any benchmarks or references comparing the speeds would be great.

 

[TLScrappy]

Are you going to overclock?

 

[IntrinsicValue]

I know this doesn't specifically answer your question, but I have this DDR2 667 RAM, and have played games like Rome: Total War on it with absolutely no problems.

Just my experience....

 

[Mr Bob]

Originally posted by: TLScrappy
Are you going to overclock?

- No, but it would be nice to see the differences between OC'd 667 vs OC'd 800 too. Dunno if anyone has even benched this stuff before though.

 

[StopSign]

What do you mean by that? If you overclock you'll be using the 1:1 divider and the performance will be the same if both clock to the same speed. 800 simply guarantees a higher overclock.

 

[Mr Bob]

Higher speed = faster, but how much faster will it actually be. That's what i'm trying to answer.

 

[Roguestar]

OP: Unless you change your memory ratio, putting it all together at default will have the FSB running at 266Mhz and therefore regardless of the RAM rating it'll be running at 533. So the only time you need 800Mhz rated RAM is if you need your FSB to hit 400 or more, unless you change the memory ratio in the bios to something like 4:5 or 1:2.

Originally posted by: StopSign
What do you mean by that? If you overclock you'll be using the 1:1 divider and the performance will be the same if both clock to the same speed. 800 simply guarantees a higher overclock.

No, it guarantees your memory will be able to deal with a 400Mhz FSB. It doesn't mean overall his overclock will work regardless of other factors.

 

[Mr Bob]

Roguestar, have links I could read that goes into that?

 

[n7]

Unless you like spending money, or are overclocking, there is little reason to go with faster than DDR2-533 RAM on a C2D.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/core2duo-memory-guide.html

 

[bamacre]

Roguestar is absolutely correct.

If you are NOT overclocking, you can get 533mhz DDR2 and you'd be fine.

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: Roguestar
OP: Unless you change your memory ratio, putting it all together at default will have the FSB running at 266Mhz and therefore regardless of the RAM rating it'll be running at 533. So the only time you need 800Mhz rated RAM is if you need your FSB to hit 400 or more, unless you change the memory ratio in the bios to something like 4:5 or 1:2.

Originally posted by: StopSign
What do you mean by that? If you overclock you'll be using the 1:1 divider and the performance will be the same if both clock to the same speed. 800 simply guarantees a higher overclock.

No, it guarantees your memory will be able to deal with a 400Mhz FSB. It doesn't mean overall his overclock will work regardless of other factors.

If you are not overclocking, can you change the FSB:memory ratio in the BIOS to run the memory at a faster speed and gain some performance from it?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: Roguestar
OP: Unless you change your memory ratio, putting it all together at default will have the FSB running at 266Mhz and therefore regardless of the RAM rating it'll be running at 533. So the only time you need 800Mhz rated RAM is if you need your FSB to hit 400 or more, unless you change the memory ratio in the bios to something like 4:5 or 1:2.

Originally posted by: StopSign
What do you mean by that? If you overclock you'll be using the 1:1 divider and the performance will be the same if both clock to the same speed. 800 simply guarantees a higher overclock.

No, it guarantees your memory will be able to deal with a 400Mhz FSB. It doesn't mean overall his overclock will work regardless of other factors.

If you are not overclocking, can you change the FSB:memory ratio in the BIOS to run the memory at a faster speed and gain some performance from it?

That is overclocking--you are just OCing your RAM only, not your processor.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: n7
Unless you like spending money, or are overclocking, there is little reason to go with faster than DDR2-533 RAM on a C2D.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/core2duo-memory-guide.html

Excellent read--thanks for the linkage n7...

 

[Mr Bob]

Great read about memory speeds on Conroe! Thanks a lot 🙂

 

[Conky]

Well, the best part about getting DDR2-800 RAM is that when you go to overclock then you can get a very healthy overclock without overclocking your RAM. And even if you don't overclock you have RAM that runs faster assuming you have a motherboard that supports native DDR2-800 settings.

I've been flamed rather unmercifully on this board before for selecting cheaper DDR2-800 RAM over more expensive and slower rated RAM but the results speak for themselves. Text 😉

I'd always rather go with lifetime warranteed faster rated RAM than roll the dice with slower rated "hand-selected" high dollar nonsense.

 

[gerwen]

To sort of sum up:
Without processor overclocking: Going from slower to faster ram can give you a small but noticeable performance boost, but it is dependent on the application. Many applications will see no improvement whatsoever. You will only see these performance boosts if you manually go into your bios and change the memory ratio to take advantage of the higher speed. This is not overclocking the ram, as you are just setting it to run at its rated speed.

However, if you were to consider overclocking, considerable performance gains can be achieved with even a mild overclock. Getting ram with a higher rated frequency will give you a larger window for overclocking. DDR2-800 will allow you to run a 400MHz Front side bus, without pushing the memory beyond the rated specs. But then again DDR2-667 memory will allow a 333Mhz FSB which is a considerable improvement over stock. On a E6600, stock is 2.4GHz, OCing to a 333FSB would be 3.0GHz, and 400FSB would be 3.6 GHz. 3.0GHz would be considered a conservative overclock.

 

[trOver]

I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM

SOLUTION: keep the fsb at 266. Under factory settings, the fsb to ram ratio is 1:2, giving your ram speed a huge 533mhz. (woot!) my ram was rated at 1ghz, so i just uped the ratio of my fsb to ram, and now its running at 800mhz (3:5 or something)

on my motherboard, p5w-dh deluxe with the 1707 bios, you can select what speed to run your ram at, and then it will automatically make a ratio, while keeping your fsb at stock speeds.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: Roguestar
OP: Unless you change your memory ratio, putting it all together at default will have the FSB running at 266Mhz and therefore regardless of the RAM rating it'll be running at 533. So the only time you need 800Mhz rated RAM is if you need your FSB to hit 400 or more, unless you change the memory ratio in the bios to something like 4:5 or 1:2.

Originally posted by: StopSign
What do you mean by that? If you overclock you'll be using the 1:1 divider and the performance will be the same if both clock to the same speed. 800 simply guarantees a higher overclock.

No, it guarantees your memory will be able to deal with a 400Mhz FSB. It doesn't mean overall his overclock will work regardless of other factors.

If you are not overclocking, can you change the FSB:memory ratio in the BIOS to run the memory at a faster speed and gain some performance from it?

That is overclocking--you are just OCing your RAM only, not your processor.

How's that overclocking if the RAM is rated to run at DDR2-800? You're just running it at stock. Anything other than 800 is either underclocking or overclocking.

 

[Roguestar]

Then specifically in that instance it is not. But I think he meant if you were to take DDR2-533 and run it at a higher ratio than 2x FSB speed (ie: over 533) it'd be overclocked.

Special K: If you're not interested in overclocking the processor but have bought higher speed rated RAM and want to get more out of it, you can indeed change the ratio to run the RAM faster. For example if you're running the normal 1:1 ratio (FSB 266 memory 533) you can run your memory faster than that if you run at the 2:3 ratio (FSB 266 memory 800). This would help in things that require extra memory bandwidth but if your memory can handle those speeds fine you may as well overclock even a little 😉. Overclock your CPU to within your comfort range and then change the ratio up until you reach your memory's max speed (or higher if you want to overclock it too) to get the most from it.



Edit: sum day i speel gud