DDR2 on 939 Boards?

J Nice

Junior Member
Feb 14, 2005
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:eek: Ok, not a lot of time to research this.

Will DDR2-3200 work with chipsets such as the nforce3/4 VIA K8T890?

 

Sqube

Diamond Member
Dec 23, 2004
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I'm not quite sure if this is accurate, but I thought I read that using DDR RAM is better for nForce4 because of the integrated memory controller or some technobabble like that.

Uhh... yeah, just wait for someone else to post. :eek:
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: Sqube
I'm not quite sure if this is accurate, but I thought I read that using DDR RAM is better for nForce4 because of the integrated memory controller or some technobabble like that.

Uhh... yeah, just wait for someone else to post. :eek:

Sort of.

The Athlon64 CPUs don't need the super-high bandwidth of DDR2 like the Pentium 4s do (note how badly the 533FSB Pentium 4 "B"s perform relative to the 800FSB models (the P4"C"s), especially in multiprocessor situations). And because of the onboard memory controller, A64s see more benefit from very low latency RAM than very high speed RAM. Since DDR2 has a *higher* latency than DDR1, it is unlikely you would see any performance improvement until it gets MUCH faster than current DDR1 speeds.

AMD is rumored to be coming out in a year or so with "Socket 900", which will be using DDR2 (and may, at some point a few years from now, replace S939). No firm details have been released about this yet, however.

Also: the memory controller on the Athlon64 is on the CPU die. The chipset has practically no impact on memory performance, or even what kind of memory is used, since the RAM is hooked up directly to the CPU. Asking if DDR2 will work with a particular A64 chipset is sort of a useless question, since it depends on the CPU, not the chipset.
 

J Nice

Junior Member
Feb 14, 2005
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Excellent, thanks for the advice anyone. I guess to ammend the question...

Will DDR2 boards fit in DDR1 slots?

 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
8,808
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Originally posted by: J Nice
Excellent, thanks for the advice anyone. I guess to ammend the question...

Will DDR2 boards fit in DDR1 slots?

NO.

DDR2 != DDR1. They have a different number of pins, and are not cross-compatible.