how the hell does H does this work?!?!

[Pirate_Freder]

all right so all of the socket 939 mobos out there say that they support ddr266,333, and 400 BUT I always see people running ddr500 or higher, how does this work? at the link below is some mushkin redline memory and in the description it lists some mobo's that it has been tested on and is recomended for BUT it is ddr500. if someone could please explain this to me because i am going to be moving on up to 64-bit very soon and need to decide on what ram to get
http://kit-tronics.com/xcart/customer/product.php?productid=3170&cat=&page=

btw, i am going to be getting an opteron s939(somewhere around a 144-150) with an Abit an8 mobo, just in case you need to know and if there is any critique you have for that

[Quailane]

Those numbers just mean the speeds it is rated to run at. Most of the time it can do much better than that.

[Pirate_Freder]

yes but how is it that the mobo supports it? are you saying that mushkin is just selling ddr400 oc'd to 500mhz?

[Reefa_Madness]

Here are links to some advance reading that will help you sort your questions out. There are also numerous threads in this forum on this topic.

Basically there are default speeds that memory can run (these are the PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333), PC3200 (DDR400), etc), but most can be forced to run faster via settings in the BIOS. Ideally, the ram and the cpu would run at the same speed, but if your ram cannot run at the same speeds as the cpu then the dividers are used and they are, in effect, equalizers.

I think you'll find the reading helpful and there are tons more available a google search away.

http://i4memory.com/showthread.php?t=327

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12960

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/athlon64oc/index.html

http://www.insanetek.com/index.php?page=overclocka64

[Reefa_Madness]

yes but how is it that the mobo supports it? are you saying that mushkin is just selling ddr400 oc'd to 500mhz?

DDR400 is the highest official rating for ram. Anything faster than that, such as Samsung TCCD which is manufactured and rated as DDR500 (4ns) is not technically a recognized speed for DDR memory.

Because of that, the motherboard makers do not officially support memory faster than DDR400, yet all of the top tier mfgs have mobos designed to exceed those speeds.

[Pirate_Freder]

so what will the abit an8 support since all the mobos SAY they only support up to ddr400?

[Rbreb13]

so what will the abit an8 support since all the mobos SAY they only support up to ddr400?Officially support= up to DDR400.
Unofficially support= anything else.

[scooter787b]

JEDEC standards :/