Sick and Tired... Help me choose.

[Vio1]

Hi, Ive been battling with my pc to get it working faster. I know my cpu can take more but I think my ram and motherboard are keeping me back. Ive vdimm mod my p4p800 and I get no better results then before... Ram running at 3.10v doesnt allow me to get any more fsb... So now Im stuck with 3.36ghz.


Question: What motherboard should I get??? I want to overclock! What ram should I get with that motherboard?

If you had the money and were gonna buy any mobo ram combo for o/c which would it be? Why?

Is the Abit Ai7 worth it? ( the only thing i like is the ram voltages on this mobo...)

 

[larva]

You've already got as good a motherboard and ram as you can get. There is no elegant solution for a problem that does not exist. Unless your power supply is inadequate chances are that your cpu just doesn't have any more in it.

 

[Vio1]

it does because I fail memtest86 tests....

 

[larva]

What does what?

Believe it or not the cpu is involved in anything your computer does, including running memtest. It may not be the answer you are wanting to hear, but there is nothing wrong with either the P4P800 or Corsair XMS3500.

 

[Vio1]

Well, there may not be something wrong with my mobo or ram... but what could I get that would be better? What about all those: pc3700, 4000, 4200??? What about the Asus P4C800e?

 

[Vio1]

Larva, you were infact correct.... about it might being the limit of my cpu. I can post into windows at over 3.54ghz, however it almost instantly restarts. I took it down to 3.44 and ran my mem at 3:2 (thereby running my ram rather slowly) and I still get errors in Memtest86. So it is infact my cpu that has been the problem all along.

 

[larva]

The thing you have to remember is that most of the effective memory subsystem is contained within the modern cpu. The cascaded L1 and L2 caches on board modern cpu's are there solely to keep the cpu from having to load information form the comparitvely slow main memory banks. They are fantastically effective in doing so, with the combined hit rate of the two caches exceeeding 95%. This means that most times data read from memory is already contained in one cache or the other already.

The other important conceptual point to understanding this situation is that every memory access passes through the cache, whether the data was there before the issuance of the request or not. If the needed data is not present in the cache, it is loaded from main memory to the L2, from the L2 to the data portion of the L1, and then to the cpu's registers. So any instability in the cpu can and will produce the same symptoms as errors in the RAM itself. And since the overwhelming majority of the tansistors in a modern cpu are those that make up the caches, it is likely that instabilities in the cpu's operation will affect the integrity of the data in the caches.

 

[Como]

"Hi, Ive been battling with my pc to get it working faster. I know my cpu can take more but I think my ram and motherboard are keeping me back. Ive vdimm mod my p4p800 and I get no better results then before... Ram running at 3.10v doesnt allow me to get any more fsb... So now Im stuck with 3.36ghz."

okay, i'm stuck with a k6-2 at 500 mhz for now...you make it sounds like 3.36 is a bad thing! shesh. all i can say is i've heard wonderous things about OCZ ram, and mushkin, too. they also are a bit on the pricey side, i spent $140 on a stick of mushkin for my new system i have yet to build...