Is the Athlon Barton Compatible with PC 2100 RAM?

[jbboldeniv]

Hello, everyone, I am new to this forum. I have been viewing Tom's hardware for years now. However, I have never thought about posting until now. I have a question. Is the Athlon BARTON compatible with PC 2100 DDR Sdram? Or do you have to get
DDR 333 or DDR 400 memory? I am saying this because I am thinking about upgrading this month to a 2500+ Athlon Barton. However, I don't want to change my ram; as I have 1.25 gb of PC 2100 DDR SDRAM. If I get the barton chip, can I still run it at full clock speed, or should I say 133 mhz, and get the full clock speed? Or will the chip be underclocked as a result of it.

Or I guess a better question would be: Can I run PC 2100 DDR
SDRAM at 166 mhz if the processor is a 166 MHZ chip?

I am confused on this. Someone please help me out on this.

Later,

jaybeedoldiv

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

what you set your fsb at translates into the speed of your RAM times two. So if you set it at 166, your ram is set at 333. And since barton defaults at 166 or higher won't work any lower, i'm guessing you need pc2700 otherwise you would be overclocking your RAM which can cause some serious data curruption and the computer to malfunction.

at least from my understanding. I could be wrong so ya ...



Life is irrelivent and irrational.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

Well ur real question is if your PC-2100 DDR Ram will work at PC-2700 Speeds...

That we cannot answer for you only you can.....

I Had a 256MB PC-2100 DDR CL2 Stick of Infineon B4 I had my current PC-2700 DDR CL2 Stick of Samsung...

Anyways My PC-2100 Stick ran at 166MHz Memory speed but at CL 2.5......

U need to fool around with ur memory timings to see if it WILL run stable or not...

You CAN run your Barton with a FSB of 133MHz (266MHz, same as your ram) But than you'd be underclocking your ram....

Its a gamble......ur ram may or may not work......theres no telling until u try it..so what i suggest u do is try runnign ur current setup with 166MHz FSB and memory speed.....see if it works...

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

i think you would also be underclocking the cpu because it's a fixed multiplier that assumes 166fsb.

at 1.8ghz which is 2500+ right? so that would be a 15x multiplier (2500/166). so 15x133 would then be 2000+ instead of 2500+ and thats a noticible drop. It's not 1800/166 because i get an weird multiplier setting of 10.8 which isn't right. It's always based on 5's. 15.0, 15.5, 16 etc ...

but you can easiler find the speed by noting the difference of barton 2500+ and 2600+ and then subtracting. so that would run at 1575mhz isntead of 1800.

*shrugs* just amuzing myself really lol!

Life is irrelivent and irrational.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A>

 

[knowan]

Can you run PC 2100 RAM with a Barton? Yes. Will it run well? No. The Barton will be bottlenecked by the RAM.

Can you overclock your RAM to PC2700 speeds? Maybe. There's no way to tell except to try. If you've got good PC2100 (cas 2) then you may be able to run it at pc2700 with a cas 2.5. You should be able to test it right now in your curent setup (providing your bios lets you run your RAM asyncroniously, which most motherboards will except the ECS k7s5a)

--------------
Knowan likes you. Knowan is your friend. Knowan thinks you're great.

 

[TKS]

If you try to overclock your pc2100 it will be a disaster without softtouch III BIOS. So there you are dependent upon what type of motherboard you have...pc2100 operates at 266Mhz which is about right for any of the AMD's with the 266 FSB. Naturally the pc2700 operates at 333Mhz...direct with the 333 FSB of the Bartons. Let me ask you this question: Would you put super swamper (overclocked pc2100) tires on a caddilac (barton CPU)? I would hope you'd go with the classic white walls (pc2700). If no, Then go out and get some pc2700...RAM prices are bottoming out lately and now would be a good time. I recommend micron (lifetime warranty and relatively inexpensive) although corsair is pretty good but expensive. If you want some of the best testing RAM on the market go with Kingston.

Insert_ending_here,
TKS