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async and sync mem

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mirko_3

Member
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Location
Italy
I think I need a small explanation on this; correct me if I'm wrong in anything:

as far as I know, sync mem/cpu is a great thing; but let's say that mem speed is higher than cpu, would that perform worse? I don't think so, so what's the magic with sync mem? where is the performance gain?
And Granite Bay is supposed to work with sync mem only, wouldn't that hurt performance?

I'm no newbie, it's just that this particular thing is...weird as far as I'm concerned...

Thanks
 
The system will not perform worse if you use async speeds. If your using P4, it doesn't matter and it's actually good for the system, because although you found the limit to your fsb, the memory bandwidth is still available. The problem with doing this is with AMD cpus. Since the P4 has a fsb of 400 or 533, you have not reached the limit of the fsb till your ram gets that high (multiplying the bus by two of course). But with AMD, the bus is the same for both the chip and the memory. So you can have the chip running at 166 and the memory at 200, but the chip cannot use it since it's only at 166. So for P4's it is good and helps, and on Athlons it doesn't show much of a performance difference, if any. But either way, I don't think it'll hurt performance.
 
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