Is a good mobo more important than memory??

Having just upgraded from a Gigabyte GA7 DXR, I wasn't expecting any great moves on my generic cas 2.5 memory. I was rather suprised when my Epox 8K3A+ just kept on going. The memory cost me £27 UK for 256Mb last year when RAM hit rock bottom, I wish I had bought a lot more.

On the Gigabyte the memory would start corrupting at 143Mhz cas 2 and that was at the maximum voltage the board could supply. The Epox seems to keep on going, admittedly its not on the fastest memory timings in BIOS, but is running cas2 with 4 way interleave and fastwrite at 168Mhz.

I don't think the memory scores are too bad for a Duron 1200@1344 and think it's the processor holding me back from better memory scores. I am scoring in the low 2400's / low 2100's in Sisoft Sandra on booting, but at the moment 2306/2069 whilst browsing.

Is a good mobo far more important than memory that you put in it??

you've done the test that tells you...

You changed nothing but the mb, and went from 143fsb to 168... Sure would look like the mb is important.

As far as "more importat" goes, its just a matter of the specific examples you are talking about. Obviously some 66MHz ram would be an even greater impediment to performance than your Gigabyte motherboard, while some other pieces or ram might not. It's always dangerous to make blanket statements concerning complex systems.

One generalization that you can safely make is a system is only as strong as its weakest component. Combine a good motherboard with a good stick of ram, and you maximize your chances for really high FSB. Sounds like your ram was a whole lot better than you realized.

regards,
larva

Absolutely nothing changed apart from the mobo, I think this certainly serves as a good indication of how important a motherboard can be. The memory score improvement is quite amazing too, about 600 points over the Gigabytes maximum performance on the first reading of Sandra and about 400 for the second.

Admittedly I seen to have hit a brick wall as far as memory performance goes, infact going further just seems to lower scores. I am certain that branded memory will yeild an even higher possible memory clock, but this seems to me an indication of just how important motherboard choice can be in relation to memory overclocking and even branding. Sure I need to prove the latter, but that shouldn't be so long in coming.

cool

13oots2 said:

Absolutely nothing changed apart from the mobo, I think this certainly serves as a good indication of how important a motherboard can be.

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I'm not questioning that was what happened, I'm just saying that the conclusion that the mb is important risks bypassing the obvious and heading straight to the excruciatingly obvious

You posed your original post as a question, but you already had the answers that exist because of the testing you alone did. The back to back test showed just how important mb quality was in your application, making you the expert on this particular comparison. Like I said it's dangerous to try to make a blanket statement covering all situations, but it is obvious in your case the mb was the weak link.

I'm glad you got such substantial gains from a simple mb swap. Sounds like your system is perfroming great It's just impossible to say for all cases which is more important. If someone has truly hideous ram and a good mb, ram is more important for them. If, as in your case, you have good ram but a crap mb, obviously changing the ram would be of lesser value.

regards,
larva

Re: cool

larva said:

Like I said it's dangerous to try to make a blanket statement covering all situations, but it is obvious in your case the mb was the weak link.

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I didn't think that I was trying to make a blanket statement, hence I phrased the findings as a question. All that was offered were my own findings and then asked for a reply to the question again offered at the end. This allows other members to make up their own minds, and offer comments as to the findings. If I had stated that the mobo was more important then I would agree with your posts, but as it is I feel I offered everyone an opportunity to put forward their own ideas, hence an open mind.

Perhaps we should move this one to debates, looks like we could keep the off topic of statements going for a while

I would say that a mobo is more imprtant just because it plays more of an all encompassing role for you pc.

13oots2 said:

Is a good mobo far more important than memory that you put in it??

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Answering the question you posed requires a blanket statement that is not true for all cases. Whatever you claim your intent to be you asked a question that can't be answered.

larva

IMHO there is no statement or conclusion one could make...It's all subjective, because in different situations the components are, well, different and there are so many variables that it really depends on the performance of those components. For example, you could get another brand of generic RAM and get only 2 more mhz out of it, then what could we conclude? For a solid PC, its really important to be level at all integral points, CPU, mobo, and RAM, perhaps even HDD and AGP/PCI (FSB)

---X--- said:

For a solid PC, its really important to be level at all integral points, CPU, mobo, and RAM, perhaps even HDD and AGP/PCI (FSB)

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yeah. but what is a common denominator of all those? They all connect to the mobo. When building a pc, I would say you should start with the mobo, and go from there.

It's not just the mobo or memory, but how the combination of the two goes together.

Gigabyte boards are generally not rated as highly as the EPoX boards (of which I am a great fan)

Of course, you may just have struck lucky with a good batch of generic RAM.

Lucky sod......

I know its a combination of components, but getting good results like this with generic. Well I just had to gloat a little

I decided to post it as a rhetorical question, so as not to seem too smug about the whole thing. Thanks for the lucky sod bit Red, got this warm glow speading all over at this very moment, and it aint silicon meltdown.

conscript said:

yeah. but what is a common denominator of all those? They all connect to the mobo. When building a pc, I would say you should start with the mobo, and go from there.

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---X--- said:

because in different situations components are, well, different

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My point was that you can't nail it on the head which component is most important. 13oots2 was lucky with his RAM, but what if you go off and buy a $95 motherboard and (for argument's sake, nothing specific) a $35 stick of RAM. The RAM may not perform any better in the $95 board than in a $60 board, so is the motherboard worth it? IMHO, because of this it makes the most sense to be "level" in all areas, ex. $35 RAM and $60 mobo, or $75 RAM and $95 motherboard, its just a tad bit safer and more reliable