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super low memory bandwidth scores with winbond chips?

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ryuen

Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2003
Location
at home
i just bought a refurbished pcchips m847LU from newegg. im putting my old HD (WD 4gb) in it for now. the comp is a 1700 and a buffalo 512 3200 from newegg. sisandra is saying its getting around 1125 for memory score, which is wosrt than 2100. i dont know whatas wrong, if its the mobo or the ram, or maybe the hd is too crappy or what

any suggsetions/ideas ?

thanks
 
You have a crapy motherboard, to be frank. But the real trick is that your memory clock is low since AMD setup cannot utilize memory beyond the 2xFSB clock. Meaning when you have 133 FSB the bandwidth you get is like with PC2100 which is 266, no matter what memory you use. In fact if you use better memory you get some gain on bandwidth but that is all rather miniscule (say perhaps about 1-2%). To get a better bandwidth you need to increase FSB and with the motherboard you have that won't be easy. So there is no reason to buy high quality memory when the setup cannot use it.
 
hmmm.... i didnt overclock it, bceause if i overclock, it wont boot/post or anything. but can anyone confirm this theory that whatever2003 is saying. not saying youre wrong, but just want some confirmation
 
What matters about memory is THE BANDWIDTH, not the clock or timings per se. To increase bandwidth you need to increase the FSB and decrease timings. Memory clock per se doesn't matter in case of AMD setups, for the best results (i.e. bandwidth) it should be 1:1 with the processor. If the clock is higher than 2xFSB you will gain very little and the trade off might be stability of the setup so it is not worth at all to do that. Plus it also introduces latencies per clock which actually decreases real life performance. Therefore for a little gain (say 1-2%) on the bandwidth you might lose stability and performance.
The only gain YOU get with Winbond is that you have good (low) timings. If you buy any memory that can do 2-2-2-6 on 266 MHz you would likely have similar bandwidth. A lot of PC2100 and most of PC2700 memory can do that.
To get the full benefit from Winbond you need to get 200 MHz FSB motherboard, like solid NForce2 Ultra (Abit, Asus DX, Soltek) or KT600 (Abit, Giga-Byte, Soltek). Your board won't do that.
 
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if you don't increase your FSB, there's no point in buying faster ram....thats it..

its not a "theory" its a fact.
 
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