CPU and memory dillema, doh!!

I will have a 3000 venice for a processor. Now what would be better: getting 1 gig of good ram and ocing the 3000 to like 2.7ghz(if able too) or leaving it stock and getting 2gigs of ram, maybe can get a small clock out of them.

Depends on what you do. If you game a lot, 2.7ghz might only give you about 5-10fps. But if you play BF2 a lot, 2GB of ram will make a difference.

But if you don't game a lot, and do multitasking a LOT, then the 2GB of ram and just OC about 300mhz, would be a better choice.

I am a gamer and thats only what i do with my comp. Although whats the highest fsb 2gigs of ram has gone to, if one has gotten to like 240 then that would be sweet. Hopefully enough to make the 3000 a 3200 or 3500.

Would any other game besides BF2 justify the ram? Because getting the 2gigs would cripple my overclocking dream. I just want to see the 3000 at like 2.7ghz, If BF2 is really the only game that needs it then im ok with that. Because i have BF2 on medium settings playing pretty darn smooth so im sure it would be even smoother with the other stuff.

Of course, the extra gig of RAM won't help until you actually use more than a gig of RAM. Until then, it just sits there.

Your RAM clock will not limit your CPU clock with a Venice. The RAM and memory controller have their own bus and so are always in synch. Hence, there is absolutely no latency penalty for using a memory frequency divider. In fact, even at "1:1" you're actually using a divider with the A64. So you can have the best of both worlds. OC the CPU to 2.7 or whatever it will do, and use a divider to keep your RAM happy. You'll loose only a few percent in real world performance compared to 2x512MB, and when you run games that use more than a gig, the 2GB setup will be much smoother than 1GB+pagefile.

You might find this thread helpful:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

Jacobman said:

Would any other game besides BF2 justify the ram? Because getting the 2gigs would cripple my overclocking dream. I just want to see the 3000 at like 2.7ghz, If BF2 is really the only game that needs it then im ok with that. Because i have BF2 on medium settings playing pretty darn smooth so im sure it would be even smoother with the other stuff.

Click to expand...

Get another set of 2x512 and w/ your mobo you might have a better luck @1T
but even @2T 4x512 is better than 2x1gig. as far as timing is concerned.

Otter said:

Of course, the extra gig of RAM won't help until you actually use more than a gig of RAM. Until then, it just sits there.

Your RAM clock will not limit your CPU clock with a Venice. The RAM and memory controller have their own bus and so are always in synch. Hence, there is absolutely no latency penalty for using a memory frequency divider. In fact, even at "1:1" you're actually using a divider with the A64. So you can have the best of both worlds. OC the CPU to 2.7 or whatever it will do, and use a divider to keep your RAM happy. You'll loose only a few percent in real world performance compared to 2x512MB, and when you run games that use more than a gig, the 2GB setup will be much smoother than 1GB+pagefile.

You might find this thread helpful:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

Click to expand...

I dont really know what dividers do. But you can reach the highest ghz a cpu can with ocing the ram with it?

Jacobman said:

I dont really know what dividers do. But you can reach the highest ghz a cpu can with ocing the ram with it?

Click to expand...

No, running a divider doesn't decreases your max overclock. Dividers force a ratio bewteen the cpu busspeed and the chipset bus.

You run 1:1 when you set it to DDR400 in the bios.
When you set DDR333 in the bios you will run at 1 : 1.2 (RAM : chipset).

So if you OC your Venice to lets say 2.7ghz and you use the DDR333 option in the bios the memory will run at 300/1.2 = 250mhz. Using a divider doesn't really decreases performance by much, certainly not in games. This is predictable because you also only see a small differnce between s754 and s939 in therms of performance and in this case the differnce is only caused by running single-channel versus dual-channel.

Even with the cheapest TCCD based memory you will be able to run 4*512mb 2.5-3-3-7 2T at 250mhz so that would be my choise. You can use the 8* or 7* mp too to get an even higher busspeed and thus a higher speed on the memory. I believe 4*512mb 275mhz 2.5-3-3-7 or even higher has already been done.

Jacobman said:

I dont really know what dividers do. But you can reach the highest ghz a cpu can with ocing the ram with it?

Click to expand...

Absolutely. As Alexio said, the divider just changes the ratio between the CPU and RAM frequencies. The RAM is not tied to a CPU-frequency-dependent FSB with the A64, hence there's no reason not to change the ratio. Faster RAM will get you slightly better system performance, but it won't increase your CPU clock, and as RAM is seldom a bottleneck in A64 systems, it won't make that big a difference in real-world aps. If you've got a limited budget, your money is probably better spent on something else.