Memory Question

I've been reading the memory forums and there is one thing I'm not quite understanding. I've seen people talking about the memory and the cpu running in sync with eachother, a 1:1 ratio. The other common ratio i've seen is 5:4. So, in order to have a 1:1 ratio, I'd need, say, DDR400 memory and a 200FSB on my cpu correct? So for better overall performance, would be better to get DDR400 ram and run 1:1 with a FSB of 200, or get DDR433 with a FSB of 200?

Your memory speed can be equal to or less than your FSB speed but not greater. If you get DDR433 then you could run at 1:1 with FSB at 217mhz. If you run your FSB at 200mhz then your memory would be at 200mhz in 1:1, 160mhz in 5:4 or 133mhz in 3:2.

Cheers

This question all depends on if you have AMD or P-4. The AMD folks prefer 1:1 because AMD systems perform more efficiently when in sync, but the P-4 is perfectly happy with using the 5:4 ratio.

If you are planning on buying RAM, it's a good idea to get a little faster than what you think you need (if you can afford it). That way you have more overhead room for overclocking and you can use more aggressive RAM timings.