Q9300 DDR2 or DDR3 for 1333 FSB?

[Perryg114]

I am trying to get up to speed of the latest quad core processors and FSB speeds etc. Do I need to buy DDR3 to run at 1333 FSB or can I use DDR2? I as thinking of a P5 based ASUS board for a Q9300 processor.

Perry

 

[LOUISSSSS]

u can use ddr2

 

[Drsignguy]

Originally posted by: LOUISSSSS
u can use ddr2

Based on performance and price, DDR2 is the way to go. This is your second opinion

 

[Perryg114]

Ok so what would be a good ASUS $200 range or cheaper Motherboard and what speed DDR2 memory should I get? I have good luck with ASUS boards. In fact, I have never had a bad one.

Perry

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Originally posted by: Perryg114
Ok so what would be a good ASUS $200 range or cheaper Motherboard and what speed DDR2 memory should I get? I have good luck with ASUS boards. In fact, I have never had a bad one.

Perry

Are you going to overclock?

If no, then just get DDR2-800 RAM

If yes, then depending on what you think you can your FSB to is what will determine your min RAM speed. DDR2-1000 would be more then enough, since you won't hit 500MHz FSB with a Q9300.

 

[Perryg114]

I was not planning to overclock but will standard DDR2-800 run at a 1333 FSB? 1333 FSB is standard with the Q9300. Maybe I am confusing FSB with ram frequency? I thought that DDR2-800 was for an 800 Mhz FSB and DDR2-1066 was for 1066 FSB etc. I thought that DDR2 ran out of steam around 1200 Mhz?

Perry

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Perryg114
I was not planning to overclock but will standard DDR2-800 run at a 1333 FSB? 1333 FSB is standard with the Q9300. Maybe I am confusing FSB with ram frequency? I thought that DDR2-800 was for an 800 Mhz FSB and DDR2-1066 was for 1066 FSB etc. I thought that DDR2 ran out of steam around 1200 Mhz?

Perry

DDR2 Ram can run as slow as 1/2 the rated FSB speed. A 1333Mhz FSB can support DDR2 ram running at 667Mhz speeds.

DDR2-800 is the minimum ram speed to support running a 1600MHz FSB.

(note: 1333MHz and 1600MHz FSB speeds are actually quad-pumped, so 1333 is actually a quad-pumped 333MHz FSB, 1600 is a quad-pumped 400MHz FSB...so most times you will see folks talk about FSB by the clockspeed (333, 400) and not the quad-pumped speeds(1333, 1600))

 

[Twsmit]

DDR2-800 is just fine. In fact running your memory in a 1:1 ratio all you really need is DDR2-667, so in fact DDR2-800 will give you a little headroom to run a 1600fsb chip in the future.

As for a motherboard, pretty much any P35 board will do you fine, Abit and Gigabyte have nice cheap ones, Asus also has good boards but I'm not sure which model specifically. Just check out the P35 chipset.

 

[Perryg114]

Ok, Thanks guys it gets confusing even for an engineer sometimes. So the DDR2-XXX is what I need with the XXX being at least half the FSB speed. That is all I needed. This will keep me from buying way more than I need as far as Motherboards and RAM. I trying to build two complete systems on $3000 not including software. So I figured I would build as fast a machine as my budget can stand. I have a P5K-E Asus board on my home machine that I built before XMAS and it seems to be a good stable board. I will probably use a couple of those for these work machines and the Q9300 processor.

Perry

 

[Stump1000]

I think with ddr2 800 ram, you'll have some room to overclock too if you want. Thats what I've gathered anyways. I just ordered a q9300, 8gb ddr2 800 and an Asus p5ne mb. The fsb is confusing at first because you think the ram speed needs to match the fsb of the cpu. Theres a thread about overclocking which explains all of this. Its a good read.

 

[Denithor]

IDC layed it out pretty well but let me clarify just a bit.

Your whole system speed is based off the FSB.

Intel CPUs are quad-pumped so their interface is four times the FSB (200x4=800, 266x4=1066, 333x4=1333, 400x4=1600).

DDR/DDR2/DDR3 clock speed is double the FSB. So DDR2-667 is the speed you need to run an FSB of 333 with a 1:1 ratio (DDR2-800 for FSB 400, DDR2-1000 for FSB 500, etc).

DDR3 is extremely fast (DDR3-1600 for example can handle FSB 800) but there are no motherboards or CPUs out that require these kind of speeds even for overclocking. To take advantage of DDR3 you would have to run a higher memory ratio (1:2 so it runs at twice the speed, example: FSB 400 then 1:1 is 800MHz but 1:2 is 1600MHz).

Typically higher memory speed doesn't net much (if any) real-world advantage and is only helpful in benchmarks and certain very selected applications (F@H).

Short answer: get good-quality DDR2-800 and you're good to go. This will handle stock speeds without problem and should overclock to DDR2-1000 speeds if you decide to get some additional performance out of your CPU.