DDR Question from Old Bottomfeeder

[Hlafordlaes]

I live in a time warp consisting of a 4-5 year gap between my rig and the market. As long as I don't hop on a Core2Duo machine, I can live in the happy illusions my modest upgrading brings me, and there is a modest kick one can get from beating yesterday's benchmarks with the same old gear.

My current project is building a dual Tualatin setup with my son. The board is (will be) an MSI Pro266TD Master, which takes DDR200/266 DIMMs. This is our FIRST exposure to DDR, as our current setup uses SDRAM.

My questions are:
- Can I use, say, DDR400 in order to improve overclocking results at tight memory timings?
- Is it true that, with 4 DIMM slots, populating only 2 will improve OC ability?
- Similarly, any OC impact of memory size (eg 1GB or 512MB) on OC?

Our plan is to try to get some good 2x1GB sticks of 2-2-2 DDR400 for the board and overclock those Tuallies a bit. (Don't ask why, but we are paying homage to what we think was the best Intel CPU prior to the Core2Duo line, the PIII-S @ 1.4GHz).

Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
Hlafordlaes

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: Hlafordlaes
- Can I use, say, DDR400 in order to improve overclocking results at tight memory timings?
- Is it true that, with 4 DIMM slots, populating only 2 will improve OC ability?
- Similarly, any OC impact of memory size (eg 1GB or 512MB) on OC?

Possibly not, the motherboard might not be able to handle the RAM density on your sticks.
A bit, your RAM will be limited by the slowest stick, with 4 this will logically be lower than 2.
No difference in size, but check motherboard compatability before you do anything.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

How could I go about determining if the mobo will handle the RAM density, short of buying and testing, then finding out the hard way?

 

[Bobthelost]

The corsair (or is it crucial?) RAM picking thing would be my bet.

 

[rogue1979]

If the motherboard has a Via chipset, there is a good possibility that it will handle a high density stick of ram.

If it is a SiS or an Intel chipset, the likelihood of utilizing a high density stick is much less.

The ram timings have nothing to do with being a high density module.

To play it safe I would go with a pair of 512MB sticks. Older motherboards that support DDR often won't recognize or boot with a 1GB stick.

Just get the cheapest cas 2.5 DDR333 or 400 you can find. Because the limits of your motherboard will be 160-170MHz at the very most, and that will happen only if your cpu's have a lower multipier (10x or less).

If you don't have the motherboard and ram already, it would be far cheaper to build a Sempron socket 754. While it doesn't have dual cpu support, it does support a true DDR 400 and will absolutely scald the dual tualatins in most applications. You may find a very few multi-threaded application where the tualatins hold their own, but they will be sorely bested in everything else.

 

[Furen]

To be safer still you could get 512MB sticks with 16 chips (so double-sided dimms)...

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Thanks folks. It's a VIA chipset, so hopefully it will take DDR400 (still open to more advice, tho, so keep it comin').

I am quite sure I can get even a Core2Duo setup for less money, albeit not the fanciest, or a great AMD rig as well. But we are not after being the fastest, which is arguably more a function of budget than ability. This is a tribute to the PIII, since we have just gone thru 3 years of undertaking intense medical research on the internet using an old Tyan S1854A (PIII@866). She has carried us thru thick and thin.

We got to tweaking the VIA chipset (no OC w/Tyan), putting in faster memory, and fiddling with the BIOS and settings of the humble FX5500 on her. Must have done alright, because we were actually able to complete some benches at quite a bit more than what we expected (tho less than on modern stuff).

So, when we saw a used VP6 on eBay, ran out and got that as a first step up. Under SMP-friendly XP, the VP6 seems far faster than the Tyan, in spite of the mere 133MHz diff in cpu clock speeds. And moderate gaming is a pleasure with the 6800 GT (@425/1110), another eBay find.

There appears to be some renewed oomph in the VP6 as NVidia releases drivers optimized for SMP/dual core (v91.4x has doubled our low-power 3D speeds, and upped speed in gral), and we are *guessing* Vista as well as future games will be more SMP-friendly than XP. So moving just ever slightly up to a dual Tuallie seems like it might still be fun for a while.

Both the VP6 and the dual Tuallie will eventually be relegated to folding@home, and we will finally start updating to current gear next year some time. Eventually they will all go into the musty "museum" room where the HP150s, Sega Master Systems, PSOnes/2s and such reside (as do I).

Hlafordlaes