PC1600 vs PC2100

[Guest]

I need some help clearing up the difference between PC1600 and PC2100

i'm thinking of building an Athlon 1.2 GHz (266FSB) on an A7M266 motherboard. I checked prices at crucial.com on DDR memory and I saw PC2100 CL=2.5, and PC1600 CL=2. Both simliarly priced. Which of these two should I go with?

Do the numbers denote anything specific, like you see with PC"100" being clocked at 100MHz?

Thanks for any assistance
Sean

 

[Raystonn]

PC2100 synchronizes with a 266MHz FSB. PC1600 synchronizes with a 200MHz FSB. What you really want is PC2100 CAS2. If you don't want to overclock CAS2.5 to CAS2 (I wouldn't do it myself) you can check http://www.pricewatch.com for true CAS2 memory.

-Raystonn

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[Tempus]

Everyone I've ever asked that had their 2100 CAS2.5 at CAS2 has had no probs what so ever. Not a very adventerous bloke eh?

- Tempus fugit donec vestrum relictus tripudium. Autem amor praeterea magis pretium.

 

[Raystonn]

I'm not adventurous with memory. A single tiny memory problem can lead to data being corrupted in a database or somewhere else crucial. It can be disastrous and is not worth it in my book. I'm willing to overclock a CPU, and probably a video card (though I haven't actually done a video card) because neither one tends to corrupt data on failure. They usually lock up. Overclocked memory though, that can be evil. When it fails you don't know.

-Raystonn

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[Tempus]

It seems to me that you don't risk any serious data loss by messing with memory. The data is stored on the HD (obviously), and is safe from the memory corrupting it. The only danger is the possibility that you corrupt data that is temporarily in the physical memory.

- Tempus fugit donec vestrum relictus tripudium. Autem amor praeterea magis pretium.

 

[Raystonn]

"you don't risk any serious data loss by messing with memory"

You can corrupt any data with which you work. It is all stored in memory while you work with it. They only way you could avoid risking corruption of your data is by not using it. That's not much of an option in my opinion.

-Raystonn

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[Tempus]

"It is all stored in memory while you work with it"

Yes, but you are usually only working on one important thing at a time, not every piece of important data stored.

There's always a risk in overclocking anything, I'm just trying to put the idea across that it is no more, if not less dangerous to overclock memory than a processor, vid card, or anything else.

Also, you stand much more of a risk by overclocking the frequency of the ram than the latency at which it operates. It is still OCing the ram, so if you run on an overclocked FSB, you have already overclocked your RAM. In which case your entire arguement has been hypocritical.

- Tempus fugit donec vestrum relictus tripudium. Autem amor praeterea magis pretium.

 

[Raystonn]

Processors either work or they don't. When they don't, they lock up. They don't corrupt data. Video cards don't work with important data, so it doesn't matter if they corrupt everything in video memory. Normal system RAM however has a great deal of important data that, if it should get written back to disk at some point corrupted, could totally scr** you.

For these reasons, I never overclock memory, via either FSB or CAS latency. I only use it at the speed at which it has been rated.

-Raystonn

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[jg38141]

I actually leave my memory alone too. Of course rayston has rdram (sorry have to take a shot), which is notoriously unable to be overclocked, but reguardless I'd leave the bus alone, but the cas latency it doesn't hurt to try it better. If it doesn't work you generally notice real quick, it just won't work. It won't just quietly corupt your data.

My Jesus is whiter than your Jesus.

 

[Raystonn]

I have systems with both RDRAM and SDRAM. I overclock the RAM in none of my systems. With today's prices, it's just not worth it.

-Raystonn

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my employer. =

 

[Tempus]

So you have never overclocked the front side bus (FSB) of your computer? You only OC using multiplyer? The goal of most people that own a tbird is to get their FSB to 150MHz+. I have never, ever heard of someone's precious data being somehow corrupted by it. Think about it, the memory certainly won't effect data permanantly stored on the HD, and for the most part, any important data in the memory is only temporaryily there, until is it saved again to the HD. So anyone that OC, and then loads up their taxes, before they make sure there system is stable after OCing, deserves to lose whatever they had been working on since their last save, because of stupidity.

- Tempus fugit donec vestrum relictus tripudium. Autem amor praeterea magis pretium.

 

[jg38141]

I've done it, it just renders my nic card unusable anything over 34mhz on the pci bus. So as long as I don't wanna get on the net it works fine, but since I like the net, I leave it as is.

My Jesus is whiter than your Jesus.