Memory Bottleneck to my OC??

[lennytiger]

Hey Guys,

In the system in the sig below, I have one stick of PC2100 (266MHz) RAM, I can't OC anything past 2100MHz, its just not stable. Thats 14 x 140FSB.

Would upgrading my memory to DDR400/PC3200 stop this bottleneck and allow a faster oc? I have some DDR400 on the way in the mail anyway!

Thanks,

Len

[Mdogs444]

Well if you arent using a divider, im suprised its stable as it is. 140fsb x 2 = DDR280, and you are running DDR266. Yes getting DDR400 will allow you to increase your FSB w/o using a divider, but your CPU may still be limited by itself, by voltage, the board, or even the PSU. We'd need more info to help such as:

Is it memtest stable?
Prime stable?
error out on 3dmark?

[lennytiger]

It is memtest stable, prime stable and 3dmark stable at this oc.

[lennytiger]

You see the main things holding me back from my perspective will be the board (in sig) and the standard 300Watt PSU that came with my case. Cooling i great and my fan controller has plently of room for extra cfm output to combat heat...

[lennytiger]

Woah hang on, now I'm getting old here... could you explain a divisor to me, isn't that the PCI bus 33.3MHz or 44.something MHz?

[Mdogs444]

No its the ratio for memory. If you are running 140fsb, then running 1:1 would be running the memory at 140MHz (ddr280), but if you bump it down to 1:2, it would be like running the cpu at 140Mhz fsp, but the memory would drop to 70Mhz (ddr140). THere should be 5:6, 2:3, etc dividers in your bios.

[lennytiger]

I haven't seen any dividor settings in my bios but i'll have another look... It's almost deffinately just at 1:1 now.

[lennytiger]

No I don't have any dividor settings... my mobo is only compatible with PC2100 it won't recognise higher, just runs it a PC2100...