Dropping ddr2-400 into Allendale e4300 board

[vois2]

A friend has gathered the parts needed for his system and he is wanting to put his older RAM 2 x 1GB of DDR2-400 (PC2-3200) into :
Gigabyte 965P DS3
Allendale E4300

We will do no overclocking with this setup obviously. Later on he may invest into ddr2-800 for future overclocking options.

Question:
What I was wanting to know is whether I need to change *ANY* motherboard BIOS settings to account for the DDR2-400 *or* will the mobo detect the PC2-3200 RAM and automatically make those changes from the get-go ??

Thanks for your help.

 

[n7]

WTF i am blind

Somehow read the post wrong, nevermind me.

 

[bkiserx7]

quad pumped 800 fsb allendale shouldn't the default memory speed be ddr2 400? where with quad pumped 1066 its ddr2 533.

 

[stevty2889]

Not sure if it will work, I don't think the 965 chipset supports lower than 533mhz ram, since they don't have the option for the 400mhz divider like some of the 975 chipset boards do.

 

[dguy6789]

Running 400Mhz DDR2 with an Allendale at stock speeds would be 1:1 ratio. I have never seen a motherboard that does not have that divider.

 

[superHARD]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Running 400Mhz DDR2 with an Allendale at stock speeds would be 1:1 ratio. I have never seen a motherboard that does not have that divider.

lol

 

[vois2]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. I'm posting below a bit of what I have learned from some other forums as well, just to spread the love a little.

----

While DDR2-400 is not officially supported on the 965 chipset, it will work. I was just curious whether I needed to make any motherboard settings changings from the get-go. When the E4300 came along, it offered the 800FSB to be able to match this older RAM.

For the board mentioned in my OP and the Allendale E4300, there are folks running the DDR2-400 with these in NewEgg reviews. So that gave me encouragement. I did receive the good advice (in a separate forum) that I may need to disable quick boot, as well as reset the battery of the CMOS, in order to force the motherboard to reconfigure into new settings.

DDR2-4200 (PC2-3200) may have been the first speed offered in the DDR2 line, I am not sure.

An explanation of unsupported RAM working in this scenario is given here:
(I copied this from a separate forum):
Although DDR2 400 memory is not officiallly supported here on that 965 chipset, I fancy it is a good match for the processor. Intel chipsets often support combinations and ratios they don't list You can only try it. You won't break anything. Bios should detect SPD settings off the RAM, but sometimes you need to disable quick boot or take out the CMOS battery for 5 minutes to force the bios to reconfigure. Worth trying because when you use slower memory, the effective speed change is minimal, you make up for most of it with CAS latency improvement. It'll be fine, 2 sticks of DDR2-400 in dual channel gives an effective 800mhz of memory bandwidth which matches the 800mhz fsb of the e4300. Just don't plan to overclock.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: superHARD

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Running 400Mhz DDR2 with an Allendale at stock speeds would be 1:1 ratio. I have never seen a motherboard that does not have that divider.

lol

Do you find something comical that I missed somewhere?