Font Side Bus speed and RAM speed

[Mantis01]

What is the coralation, if any, between the Front Side Bus of a motherboard and the memory frequency of RAM? If I had a motherboard with a FSB of 266MHz would it do me any good to get 333MHz RAM, or should I stay with 266?
I see a lot of manufacturers pairing up motherboards with lets say 533MHz FSB with 1066MHz RDRAM. Wouldn't the RDRAM only work as fast as the FSB? Or, is RAM not limited to FSB speed.

If someone could clarify that would be great.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: Mantis01
What is the coralation, if any, between the Front Side Bus of a motherboard and the memory frequency of RAM? If I had a motherboard with a FSB of 266MHz would it do me any good to get 333MHz RAM, or should I stay with 266?
I see a lot of manufacturers pairing up motherboards with lets say 533MHz FSB with 1066MHz RDRAM. Wouldn't the RDRAM only work as fast as the FSB? Or, is RAM not limited to FSP speed.

If someone could clarify that would be great.

First question: 333 ram is not a bad idea, simply because it will still work and allow for future upgrades. KT333 can allow you to set the ram's bus speed to 333 while keeping the cpu fsb at 266.

Second question: yes that is true but because of the dual data nature of ram, it effectively doubles the speed.

Third question: ram is basically limited to a certain FSB, but other factors determine ram's performance.