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For Core 2 Duo, does having your memory and FSB in synch matter?

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Gregory_WE

Member
Joined
Jun 19, 2002
I know back in the day with the Athlon XPs and P4s you ideally wanted your memory running synchronously with the system's FSB (1:1), however with Athlon 64s that no longer was the case and running on a divider didn't inherently cost you in performance. I'm most likely going to be switching over to C2D so I'm curious about whether they are affected by synch/asynch when I determine my memory choice. From all the benches and reviews I've looked at over the last few months it would seem like it isn't important, but just asking to be sure.

For gaming it would seem like the best option would be to just get some good valued 2x2GB sticks and run them at whatever frequency they top out at (likely 800-1000MHz). Am I right? There doesn't seem to be any point in spending a lot of $$ on sticks that would do higher frequencies or better timings since for games there isn't a real-world performance advantage.

Also, while I'm asking, is RAM compatability much of an issue with boards on the P35 chipset? At this point I see myself just getting whatever 4GB kit that happens to be priced well at the time I buy.
 
thought it didnt matter on AMD64s b/c of their Intergrated memory controller. for lets say a Q6600, at 1:1 mem/cpu. RAM @ 400Mhz (DDR2 800) = 9 x 400 = 3.6Ghz. so I would think DRR2 800Mhz memory would be okay.
 
well there is no performance hit when not running 1:1 ratio. Gauntam here has higher benchmarks on the 2:3 ratio, i thought there was another one but i cant recall it right now.

RAM compatability should not be happening now on P35 boards. esp since they have been out long enough that the bios has been updated to not have that happen.

btw some good ddr2 ram in 4gig kits would be this stuff.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231145
or this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231148
 
I had a stable OC with divider, so that I could maximize my RAM as well as my FSB and Core freq. It ran prime stable for 24hrs, but when I tried to fold I would get errors. So I underclocked my RAM to run at 800MHz and ran at 1:1 and whammo! No more folding errors, and noticed no difference in system performance as a result. The system was stable, but there's just something about dividers that doesn't sit right with some applications I guess.

Sorry, that's all I can tell ya.
 
I had a stable OC with divider, so that I could maximize my RAM as well as my FSB and Core freq. It ran prime stable for 24hrs, but when I tried to fold I would get errors. So I underclocked my RAM to run at 800MHz and ran at 1:1 and whammo! No more folding errors, and noticed no difference in system performance as a result. The system was stable, but there's just something about dividers that doesn't sit right with some applications I guess.

Sorry, that's all I can tell ya.

i would oc the ram back and run dual superpi 32m's as that stresses the memory subsystem along with the cpu, prime just does the cpu. the only possiblities for the problem were you needed looser timings or you needed more voltage for the ram to be stable.
 
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