Will an upgrade from PC2100 to PC3500 make a difference?

[Sam1230]

I just bought a new Radeon 9700 Pro to replace my Geforce 4 Ti4400 which, in the end, is only gonna cost me $65 dollars after I sell my Geforce 4. I then bought a NIB in box Asus A7N8X to replace my Asus A7V333.

To follow all this up...should I replace my 512MB of PC2100 with PC3500? Would I notice any difference?

 

[Megatomic]

Well, unless you are planning on overclocking your FSB you won't get much benefit from getting any memory faster than PC2700. If you plan to run at the recommended FSB I'd say get some quality PC2700 and run it at the fastest timings possible.

If you plan to overclock your FSB then by all means get faster memory.

 

[Sam1230]

I don't plan on overclocking anything, but, like I said, I'm getting an Asus A7N8X in a couple days which means PC3200 would be thing to get for 400 FSB, right?

Would I notice a difference?

 

[Megatomic]

Athlon systems actually demonstrate poorer performance when the CPU and Memory subsystems are run asynchronously. For best results, run the CPU and memory at the same FSB.

 

[Sam1230]

But the Asus A7N8X runs at 400FSB I thought...

 

[Megatomic]

It will run at 400MHz FSB (it's actually 200MHz FSB 400MHz DDR). But that doesn't mean that is what the CPU is rated for.

My Epox 8K3A+ will run at 400MHz too but that doesn't mean it is the best setting for my system.

 

[Sam1230]

What would an Athlon 2200+ T-Bred be rated?

 

[Megatomic]

266MHz FSB (133MHz DDR). You can probably run it easily at 333MHz FSB (166MHz DDR) and adjust the multiplier down if the o/c is too steep for the chip.

 

[Sam1230]

Well, I guess I'll just stick with the 2100DDR until I decide to upgrade my processor...

 

[Megatomic]

You could always get the PC2700/3000/3200/3500 (whichever floats your boat) and run the system on 166MHz FSB (DDR333). I am really sure that you could do that with no problem whatsoever.

 

[Sam1230]

I've never really overclocked though so I'm not sure how'd I'd go about doing that....

 

[John]

Originally posted by: Sam1230
I've never really overclocked though so I'm not sure how'd I'd go about doing that....

There's a wealth of knowledge in here.

 

[Megatomic]

For you it would be easy. The NForce2 motherboards are unlocking the multipliers of AthlonXP TBred chips automatically. So all you'd have to do is go into the BIOS and change the CPU and Memory FSB to 166. You could lower the multiplier a notch or two to reduce the overclock initially for testing purposes. Then you could walk it back up incrementally to see what you can get finally.

This is what I'd do if I had your gear.

 

[Sam1230]

Maybe I'll try it.

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Megatomic]

No problem Sam. Good luck and make sure to report back how it goes.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: SeekingTao
For you it would be easy. The NForce2 motherboards are unlocking the multipliers of AthlonXP TBred chips automatically. So all you'd have to do is go into the BIOS and change the CPU and Memory FSB to 166. You could lower the multiplier a notch or two to reduce the overclock initially for testing purposes. Then you could walk it back up incrementally to see what you can get finally.

This is what I'd do if I had your gear.

I was going to post this exact information, since nobody else (until SeekingTao hit it) said it. I'm out.

ps
This is what I do w/my NForce2 mobo (Epox 8RDA+). I have a B TBred (XP2100) that has a 13x default multi. I'm running at 12x180@1.700v. Rock steady 2.17GHz, baby. I use a 512mb stick of Corsair XMS3200 CAS2. I have ran it a 200MHz FSB, but the performance diff b/t 180 and 200 wasn't all that great to justify running the system at "150%", vs the "120%" I am now.