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Max 3 Ram question

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grandmaster c

Registered
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Nov 21, 2003
hey guys i just recently got an max 3 and am looking to buy ram for it. on the motherboard it says that it supports ddr400 which is pc3200.

my question is, is 3200 the fastest it can support? cause i was hoping to buy some faster ram. if you can tell me whats the highest it can support.

Also what ram speed would you recomend me getting, i have a P4 2.6C and looking to do a little bit of overclocking.
 
It supports faster memory. I currently have a 2.8C, Max3 and Kingston HyperBS PC4000 (250mhz) memory in my alt rig. Running @ 3500Mhz. It will probably support just about any name brand PC3200 and higher memory if it was developed on the base JEDEC PC3200 standard then just added more megahertz
 
I have a Max-3 to and was planning to buy the (OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Dual Channel Platinum-2x1GB)(Link were i'm buying them at :http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227210) for my board this thursday.I was planing on OC my box later on(after my big move from CA to FL and getthing a new job) and better cooling system.So i wanted get those for now to start off the path to getthing it ready for OCing.I think for the price range and my last two days of work(so no more money comeing in) plus i need the faster speed(only running an stock 512MB Kingston's)plus OS/2 and Gammeing need's to.I talked to my bestfriends dad about my choice's and he pointed out OCZ's to me.What do you guy's think about it? go for it? or not ?
 
2 x 1gb is not going to get as high an overclock as 2 x 512mb. For gaming and overclocking you don 't really need 2gb of ram. you would be doing fantastic if you got these stick to oc to 230mhz. So you have to decide if you want 2gb and a modest overclock or 1gb and a high over clock.
 
2gb isnt bad it will just limit your overclock. 2 x 1 gb would better as four sticks is more chance for one stick to hold you back and some 875 board disable PAT with four sticks.
 
I'll try to clear up a few things.

The native socket 478 chipsets(865/875) only SUPPORT upto 200 FSB. That comes out to DDR400, or PC3200. DDR1 can not be run in a ratio higher than the processor, and the highest FSB processor for the socket 478 is 200 FSB. Now with LGA775 there are processors that are running at 266 FSB, so that is now the highest supported FSB for the processor on those boards(925XE/945*/955x).

Support means that they will guarantee those speeds if you are running the proper hardware. There is no way to run PC4000 on a socket 478 system without overclocking, so why should the company support it? They don't.

That having been said, if you pick out your hardware wisely, you should be able to run PC4000 at its full speed without any problem. I ran an Abit IC7-Max3 with PC4400 at 250 FSB. My northwood was running at 250x15, which was the limiting factor for my RAM, but it wasn't really possible to go any higher on air cooling on my hot room.

Now for the quantity of RAM question. It is a general rule that the more RAM you have in a system, the lower overclock you will have. Having more RAM puts a strain on the northbridge, and you shouldn't expect to break any records while having large quantities of RAM. The i875 supports upto 4GB of RAM at PC3200 speeds.

When you read about really intense overclocking they even shy away from 1gb of RAM because they want the absolute max speed. 256x2 is the lowest that they can get while still benefiting from dual channel memory.

My opinion is that you don't need to run your RAM at anything higher than your processor, and even running it lower shouldn't really be a problem. In benchmarks you will see a difference when running your RAM faster, but you would never feel that difference while doing normal things on your computer, and probably not even during games. If you go from 512mb to 2gb you won't even see a difference in benchmarks if you are running at the same speed. The only time 2gb is better is in real world applications where you are playing with large amounts of data, or maybe many different programs each taking a lot of data.

I am happy with my 1gb, and I didn't see too much of a difference from my 512mb except in games. You might be doing things that take advantage of the 2gb, but I wouldn't recommend the normal using getting that much. Of course I also don't recommend the normal user overclocking at all. You just won't see the benefits from overclocking except in benches, unless if you are overclocked very high. I started to feel my overclock on my northwood when I was getting around 1/5 higher than stock. That was from 3ghz to 3.6ghz. Overclocking is only for fun until you get into pretty high speeds. That's just my opinion though.
 
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