DDR2 1066 or 800?

[cahutch]

Is the performance difference significant? The price difference certainly is.

I'm running 1066 RDRam right now which tells you how old my rig is.
Time for a complete upgrade.

965P or P35 with E6700 is the plan.
DDR2 800 or 1066 is the question.
Since I haven't built a rig in a long time, I'm not up to speed on DDR2 and all the timing details with it.

I'm surprised it took so long for DDR to catch up to RDRam's 533MHz FSB.
Makes ya wonder why RDRam never made it off the ground.

 

[Track]

There is no such thing as performance difference between clock speeds.

The only reason to buy 1066 instead of 800 is because u want ur FSB to be 2133 instead of 1600.

 

[cahutch]

I'm a little confused but I'm learning.

Certainly there will be some system performance difference between 2133 FSB and 1600 no?

In any case it seems to me that 1066 means a 533MHz fsb.
Everything I'm reading says that's the case, so it would be a 400Mhz or 533MHz FSB no?


I'm learning now that you can actually get better performance by running the memory at a lower speed to get better timings but I'm still not clear on how that works. Why would they increase the memory speed if it didn't increase performance?

965P or P35 chipset with a E6700.
Am I better off with DDR2 800 and tighter timings or is the DDR2 1066 worth going for ?
I have no plans to overclock at all, just looking to optimize the build.

 

[Heyyou27]

There is no such thing as performance difference between clock speeds.

The only reason to buy 1066 instead of 800 is because u want ur FSB to be 2133 instead of 1600.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that you are retarded; maybe on a LGA775 platform there is no such performance difference thanks to the 1066MHz FSB, but with an IMC there is no limit. Also, the DDR2 1066MHz would be higher binned memory, so if you ran it at 800MHz, it would have better timings than the 800MHz memory. However I personally could not justify the purchase of DDR2 1066 vs. 800 due to the huge price difference.

 

[cahutch]

I think I might be starting to get a grasp on this.

Ideally you want a 1:1 FSB to Memory ratio.
So for 1066 memory you want a 1066 FSB and for the 2.66Ghz E6700 that means a multiplier of 2.5. Correct?

So ideally 1066 memory runs at twice the speed of 800 but due to Cas Latency it's not necessarily twice the bandwidth.
I gather there is some increase in overall memory bandwidth even with 1066 cl5 vs 800 cl4 but I'm not clear what the actual difference is.

Even if you did get double the memory bandwidth you won't see double system performance but you should see an improvement in memory intensive applications like video compression etc.. Correct?

 

[Mondoman]

Here's an article with some actual data: http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=1&artpage=1962&articID=472

 

[Mondoman]

(don't I feel stupid for double-posting!)

 

[magus_gr]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/core2duo-memory-guide.html

I suggest you read this very carefully, and then ask any questions you may have!!!

 

[Trunkz_Jr]

Still no reason to call the guy retarded for asking a legit question, he came for answers not for insults .. :roll:

 

[cahutch]

Thanks Mangus and Mondo.
Trunkz, I don't think he was calling me retarded. I think he was talking to the first reply (which he quoted) and that guy wasn't asking questions, he was posting erroneous info.

So it seems that anything above DDR2 533 will see very limited gains unless you're overclocking. DDR2 800 seems to be the sweet spot for pricing now so I guess I'll go with that.

I'm still confused a bit though.
That article says that the FSB is locked at 266Mhz so DDR2 533 would be the max you need to get the ideal 1:1 ratio

Where I'm getting confused is that the 975X, 965P and the P35 chipset all supposedly support 533, 800 and 1066MHz FSB. Even my old P4 rig has a 533MHz FSB using PC1066 RDRam (i850 chipset).
Is it really the memory frequency they are talking about and not the actual FSB?

Anybody know if this is still true with the P35 chipset?
The new chipsets support faster DDR2 and DDR3 so perhaps they would see better gains from 800 and 1066 memory.

 

[chuckshissle]

If you are overclocking then get the 800 or 1066 to have a higher overclocking headroom. If not then a generic DDR2 533 will do just fine. If I were you I'll choose the 1066 given it has good set of timings.

 

[cahutch]

I'm slowly learning.... :?
Looks like my question has been answered thanks to you guys and alot of reading.

Looks like the "FSB" is controlled by the processor you use.
The E6700 I'm planning has a "1066MHz FSB" (which is really 266Mhz?)
Which still means that DDR2 533 would be the sweet spot for memory regardless of the chipset used.

DDR2 800 would only be useful if I plan to overclock the FSB to 400MHz.
DDR2 1066 would need a CPU with a 533MHz FSB and I don't think it's possible to overclock any current processors that far.

Still DDR2 800 seems to be the sweet spot for pricing even though there may not be any noticeable performance gain, maybe I'll overclock it a little.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Heyyou27]

Still no reason to call the guy retarded for asking a legit question, he came for answers not for insults .. :roll:

:lol: You got it all wrong man; I was saying Track is the "retard". Track is known notoriously for posting false information, and I addressed him accordingly. There was nothing wrong with the OP asking his question as it can often be confusing for those new to the hardware market.

 

[magus_gr]

You can run your memory faster (667/800 Mhz on intel chipsets, up to 1066 on nVidia ones) by setting a different DRAM:FSB ratio... Im not very familiar with the Intel platform, but there's many resources available, and even more ppl in these forums able/willing to help you...

DO keep in mind though that you ought to FIRST do your own research... The xbitlabs link I gave you should be a good start, but google is ultimately your best friend

Here's a step by step guide of the ASUS P5B (i965) motherboard's BIOS, which you may find quite helpful

http://www.thetechrepository.com/showthread.php?t=41

Good luck

 

[cahutch]

You can run your memory faster (667/800 Mhz on intel chipsets, up to 1066 on nVidia ones) by setting a different DRAM:FSB ratio... ...

Yeah, but as they said in the xbitlabs article you linked to, you get only a very slight (~6%) improvement by doing that with a Conroe.

According to some other things I've read (Google IS my best friend ) you can sometimes get better performance by clocking down high speed memory and setting a lower CL.

I gather AMD platforms on the other hand are actually able to take advantage of faster memory.

I learn fast :?
The last rig I built was 5+ years ago but it's been running Wow more than adequately so I've had no motivation to upgrade. That's kept me out of the hardware market for far too long.

 

[apache_lives]

Is the performance difference significant? The price difference certainly is.

I'm running 1066 RDRam right now which tells you how old my rig is.
Time for a complete upgrade.

965P or P35 with E6700 is the plan.
DDR2 800 or 1066 is the question.
Since I haven't built a rig in a long time, I'm not up to speed on DDR2 and all the timing details with it.

I'm surprised it took so long for DDR to catch up to RDRam's 533MHz FSB.
Makes ya wonder why RDRam never made it off the ground.

RDRam! what cpu do you have? Pentium 4? or Latter P3's?

If you want a stock system - DDR2-533, mild overclocking - DDR2-667, heavy overclocking - DDR2-800, extreme - DDR2-1066 (and future proofing)

 

[magus_gr]

AMD's processors have the memory controller integrated, and they work best with 800Mhz DDR2 (1066Mhz for K10 CPUs, with are scheduled for a Q4 release).

To make a long story short, and given how low memory prices are at the moment, 800Mhz is a safe bet.

 

[cahutch]

RDRam! what cpu do you have? Pentium 4? or Latter P3's?

3.06GHz Pentium 4
On an Gigabyte GA-8IHXP (850E) with 1GB of 1066RDRam.
With a Radeon 9800XT Pro (@AGP4x) it ran HL2 like a champ and has been running Wow more than adequately (>30FPS)

It's starting to flake out on me a little lately though and it's way past time for a new system.

 

[apache_lives]

RDRam! what cpu do you have? Pentium 4? or Latter P3's?

3.06GHz Pentium 4
On an Gigabyte GA-8IHXP (850E) with 1GB of 1066RDRam.
With a Radeon 9800XT Pro (@AGP4x) it ran HL2 like a champ and has been running Wow more than adequately (>30FPS)

It's starting to flake out on me a little lately though and it's way past time for a new system.

woa how much did your 1gb of RD cost you? god dam