I need some help.

[pak]

FIrst I am a noob to ram. I have read all of the stickies several times but I can not say that I completely understand them. I know higher mhz is better and the same with tighter timings. And that you need to find a balance to obtain max bandwidth.

Currently I have 754 that sucks Im hearing. No dual channel.

Im looking to upgrade to either 939 or AM2 for the purpose of memory bandwidth.

First what give you memory bandwidht? Is it strinctly mb/s? I currently reach 3200mb/s. A lot of my buddies are getting 6000mb/s on dual channel DDR. And on a post here, there is someone with some really nice DDR2 that is getting in the 7000sMB/s. That is where im trying to balance the cost versus performance gain. 939 vs am2?

Im willing to spend the extra money for AM2, but it needs to be worth it.

Now if I got 939, I can keep my current ram. 2x1gig Gskill I normally run them at 215 2.5 3 3 7. If I just move them to 939, how much of a performance gain am I looking at?

I have made a few more posts in the memory section with little to no response, I blame my posts for the lack of info and noobness to them. I hope you/someone can follow what I am going for here and can shoot me in the right direction.

--pak

 

[RedDragonXXX]

Hey there pak, I will try to answer your question to best of my abilities.

As you have said yourself you strictly limited with bandwith on s754 cause it doesn't run DC and memory controller is bottleneck.

If you are only looking between AM2 and s939, AM2 would be a better option down the road but if you want same performance (if not better) and save allot of money then s939 is what you want.

On avg with stock setting on s939 and DDR400 you will just be shy of 6000MB/s. DDR2 usually goes little lower cause it's loose timings effect bandwith big time, but it's high clocks make up for it. With a decent dual core on s939 you should have any troubles breaking 7K as I see allot of people doing it, including myself.

That being said these are the three thing that effect mem bandwith the most:

1. CPU clocks (cause of onboard mc)

2. Timings

3. RAM Clock speed

If you do decide to go with s939 you should read up on my sticky about memory bandwith and get to know what 1T and 2T command rate do and how they effect your performance.

Good Luck

 

[pak]

Thx for the reply.

Thats pretty much what I thought, but I couldnt confirm from what I was reading. CPU speed is new to me though. Probably common sense, but I wasnt aware of it being a factor to memory bandwidth. You listed it as 1. Are the listed in order from highest to lowest factors? With that in mind, is there a difference in bandwidth from single to dual core procs?

--pak