Any of you guys have the nForce2's yet?

[Illah]

I was planing on these for a while now. I promised to build a second machine for my girl too. She's on an old laptop and it's really starting to show it's age.

Anyways, I promised that once the new shhh came out she could have all my leftovers (heh, my 'leftovers' would blow most machines away ). So anyways, the nForce2's are here now and while I was originally planning a 2400 I might just grab another 1600 and up it to 1.8-ish.

Also, I heard something about two sticks of 2700 providing max memory bandwith with the hypertransport? True? False? Worth it? It'd be a bunch cheaper than hardcore 3500 mem...

--Illah

 

[Illah]

Also, and this may sound stupid, if I put in two 256 meg sticks in the nForce2 to take advatage of the dual bank deal, does it act as 256 megs of ram or 512? Thanks.

--Illah

 

[Tipycol]

Not sure about the first question, but XMS 3200 is my choice (think the 3500 has problems when running more than one stick). About the ram being recognized at 256MB, it shouldn't. It will be recognized as 512MB of ram, as if you put in two sticks of 256MB in any other board. The problem occurs when you run Dual DDR with a 256MB stick and a 512MB stick. The 512MB stick will only be recognized as 256MB if you are running Dual DDR with them. So you will have a total of 512MB of ram instead of 768MB.

 

[Serraph]

Tipycol seems to have answered your 2nd question perfectly. In regards to your first question, dual channel ddr essentially can double your memory bandwidth (i.e. 1 stick of pc3200 ram will give you 3.2 gb/s bandwidth while 2 sticks of pc3200 will give you 6.4 gb/s bandwidth) Take this for example, 300 FSB = 4.8 gb/s of memory bandwidth. Since there are no memory modules that can provide this speed (pc3500 is the max right now) you would have to use dual channel to get that much memory bandwidth. 2 x pc2400 running in dual channel would be perfect since pc2400 would give (2 x 2.4 gb/s = 4.8 gb/s) You could use 2 sticks of pc3200 but you'd still be getting the same performance as 2 sticks of pc2400.

Still waiting for the Epox 8rda+...i have all the hardware for my new rig sitting in a pile in the corner of my room while I wait.

 

[Illah]

OK, as long as 2x256 won't be seen as 512 I'm good with it. I hear what you're saying about the 2400 vs. the 3200, but two 256meg sticks of 3200 isn't insanely expensive, I might do it.

Anyone have any firsthand info on these boards yet?

--Illah

 

[tbirdkiri]

Well from what i understood, when running in dual channel mode, when you have 2 sticks of 256, you will only have 256 available. cause it spreads the load across the two sticks, creating a wider bit range.

The current amd cpus cant do anything with that much added bandwidth, so the onlything that really benefits from that bandwidth is the onboard video on the igp chipset.

 

[hassmh]

I'm pretty sure nVidia didn't drastically change their memory controllers from the original nForce (I've got the MSI 415 one), so whatever amount of memory you put in is how much is available. It works better if you have two identical sticks, but it's not necessary, and none will be wasted. It just might not perform quite as well.

Also, the added bandwidth that the CPU can't use can be used by the AGP bus and the Hypertransport bus without limiting the CPU's bandwidth, so there is some benefit to it without the IGP. It didn't show much in the original version, but I think I read that they've improved on it for the nForce2.

 

[WyrmMaster]

Well from what i understood, when running in dual channel mode, when you have 2 sticks of 256, you will only have 256 available. cause it spreads the load across the two sticks, creating a wider bit range.

I dont think thats correct. Im not sure about it, but i believe its basically like RAID for your ram. Sends half the data to each stick, effectivly doubling the bandwidth.

 

[Lumen]

I dont think thats correct. Im not sure about it, but i believe its basically like RAID for your ram. Sends half the data to each stick, effectivly doubling the bandwidth.

You are correct sir! Yes!

 

[Illah]

OK, now you all are confusing me... Would it be 256 or 512? If it's RAID for RAM then it'd be 256 effective, right?

--Illah

 

[Mambo]

What is so difficult to understand???

HOW MUCH YOU PUT IN IS HOW MUCH YOU GET (512=512, 768=768)

best is to put 2 of the same size and speed in but you don't have to

 

[NeoGeo]

No, it would be 512 mb. See any nforce2 review, and you'll see that they use 256mb x2 for the nforce(to get 512mb), and a single 512mb stick for the competing mobos in the test setup.

 

[lonewolf1983]

yes you get however much ram you put in the system, its comparable to a RAID mode 0 (striping) whereby data is split into 2 streams and 1 part sent to each stick, but 2 40gb drives in RAID 0 makes an 80gb array.
And thats the bottom line

 

[Kunaak]

I am still waiting to see more reviews, screen shots here from people that have it.

it still doesn't convince me of it's usefulness.
I just wanna see real world numbers.
not just smoke and magic.
plus...
gotta wait and see what Abit puts out

 

[palee72]

Hmmm... before I read the thread, I had a really good understanding of what was going on..With DDR being the same speed (like SDRAM) yielding the best results, and 2 sticks being the same size (SDRAM you could match different sizes in most cases)....


Now I'm all confuzzeled.....Let me see If I have this right, just to clearify....:::

2 sticks of 256 DDR 2400 will yeild 512 Mb total RAM [2x256=512]

The data is split between the 2 sticks giving you a greater bandwidth than a single stick of 512mb..

basicly anything over DDR 2400 is slightly overkill because of the limited bandwidth.? (unless you overclock, but that is a different story...)

Is this what is going on? For now simple yes or no's will suffice...(just so we know where we stand) Then we can get into the correct answers.....

Hope this clears up, cause its all cloudy and I can't see the answers well....

 

[h0mersimps0n]

I was planing on these for a while now. I promised to build a second machine for my girl too. She's on an old laptop and it's really starting to show it's age.

--Illah

Same here, time to upgrade my girlfriends PII 550 (YUCK). And she's not getting my "leftovers" she's getting a "quality upgrade of well-tested hardware" , my old MSI KT3 ULTRA...

but NOT until ABIT has its RAID board out. Then its between EPOX or ABIT.

 

[Tipycol]

Yup those are the two companies I'd go with right now