P4b266 and Memory......

[seangrrrr]

Not sure which forum this should go in so I put it in this one and motherboards.. so please bare with me I apologize for cross posting......

Ok I have the Asus P4B266 motherboard, P4 1.6A ghz processor, 512mb Corsair XMS2700 memory, ATI 32mbDDR Radeon video card, and a 40gb IBM 7200 hdd.

My question is this: Why is my memory bandwidth low?

Here are my scores....

With only the components listed installed, running on win2k pro. with a clean reformat....Sisoft Sandra 2002 scores my memory bandwidth at 2024mb/s. Now I know thats not too low but it says that it should be 2070mb/s. And that is with my BIOS settings at 2t, 2t, 2t, 5t.

Now if I overclock everything the highest stable FSB that i have gotten it to is 150. Which of course increases the memory bandwidth score.... but not by much Im talking like 2150mb/s

Now I have read of people getting memory bandwidths of 2500 etc. What my other question would be is... are these people getting the memory bandwidth at FSB's of 150+ or is it only at FSB's of 132- being that you can change the cpu/mem freq. ratio to 3:4 and dont have that choice after 132 FSB??

Any help or insight is welcomed. And for those out there that read this and are getting these large memory bandwidth scores. Can I ask what your memory scores are not overclocked, and what they are at FSB's higher than 132?? Thanks

Sean


p.s. Does anyone know if there will ever be the 3:4 ratio option past the FSB 132?? Possibly a new BIO??

 

[nvektus]

Your mem scores are just about right. All that you can do is wait for that bios update. For now, it's a choice bet OC'ing the mem more or the cpu. I'd rather ran at 150fsb than 132fsb, it's just faster that way I think.

 

[KenAF]

sean,

Your memory bandwidth does seem a little low...

You can clock your processor to 132FSB with the 3/4 divider and see what kind of bandwidth you get. Your Corsair memory maxes out at around 180MHz, according to tests by Aceshardware, so you probably couldn't use a 3/4 divider past 135FSB anyway. The SIS645 chipset in the P4S333 is nice in that it offers a few additional memory dividers, like 5/4. I hear that the forthcoming 845E boards (coming in May) will also offer additional dividers not found on current 845D boards.

That said, your hard drive is limiting your system responsiveness/performance far more than your memory. And, of course, your video card is limiting your game performance, not your memory. You might have done better with some cheap PC2100 DDR, using the savings for a new hard drive and graphics card. That Corsair memory will help you with a future motherboard, however...although probably not as much as the Samsung PC2700 DDR (which can hit 192-200MHz).