Last Question...

[cheesegrater]

PC4000 RAM will work in PC3200 motherboards. It is rated to run at 250MHZ as opposed to 200MHZ. When you overclock will be able to increase the HTT/FSB to 250 without messing with memory dividers.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... tegory=147

[congo]

In other words, PC4000 is overclockers PC3200 in loose terms.

[Mobius]

Okay, wait, so even if my motherboard documentation clearly states it only supports up to PC3200 RAM, it will still support PC4000 RAM, and if so, will there be a performance increase without overclocking?

Thanks for answering all my questions, this has been extremely helpful.

[congo]

It will support the PC4000, but whether it detects and runs at the higher speed is doubtful.

Let's say you don't wish to overclock but your system runs typical PC3200 at Cas-3 ram timings. PC4000 can be BIOS tweaked to run at tighter timings, effectively giving you a good memory bandwidth boost.

Those high speed settings need to be made manually in the BIOS, providing your mainboard has those BIOS settings available. This is one of the main differences in what I consider to be a quality mainboard, ie, the ability to tweak your hardware to it's best performance. Most POS prebuilt PC's have custom BIOS's that prevent such advantageous interdiction, hence my disgust for them.

Always buy the ram with the lowest timings or highest PC number, but beware, some high PC number ram gets that rating by running it at loose (high or slow) timings.

In other words, PC3200 2-2-2-5 ram may perform better than some PC4000 at 4-5-5-10 timings.......... more trickery for your buying pleasure gentlemen

[NicksFXHouse]

The issue is will his BIOS allow the need settings... does it have the 1T CMD available and does it allow the range of FSB along with the memory divider in order to take advanatge of the PC4000 memory

Even if the BIOS supports it... will his CPU clock high enough to be worth it? It means he must also have processor multipier available on the board.

It really is not so much the memory CAS timing as it is the ability of the memory to do 1T @ 250MHz or at least close to it.

The 1T command will boost real world performance HIGHER than raising the memory FSB by 20-30MHz so there are a number of questions that need to be answered before knowing if PC4000 memory is worth the purchase.

1. Multiplier is available
2. Memory divider is available and works
3. HTT is available and can be lowered
4. FSB scale is available and goes high enough
5. Processor will clock upo high enough
6. Vcore is available
7. HSF/tower can handle the Vcore increase
8. 1T command is available

If you cannot change and achieve the right combination of the above settings, purchasing PC4000 memory is a waste of money

In my opinion


Lower CAS timing was critical withthe TBird processors... AMD64 dont care about CAS .. it cares about 1T and high FSB on the CPU side

There will be NO performance increase without overclocking PC4000. It will run the same as PC3200.

It was designed to run @ 250FSB stable, not 200

The OCZ and XMS memory will probably hit at least 235-240

[congo]

Nick has hit the nail on the head again.

In my own system with PC4000 ram, my mainboard truly dislikes running at 250mhz with 1T command rate, requiring me to drop to 2T at that speed, indeed, I'm slightly better off in some configurations with my ram running slower at 200mhz (or slightly above) with tight timings and 1T command rate.

However, despite claims that 1T is the be all end all in ram timings, I have yet to discover any serious disadvantage in benchmarking or practical use with using 2T command rate at higher speeds, but this is quite possibly specific to my own setup.

I purchased my PC4000 at a bargain price, and though I believe some quality PC3200 OCZ or similar may have been a better choice at the time, I was constrained by budget, and the RAM I chose comes pretty close to the high priced stuff, so I'm not disappointed.

[richardd43]

I have 4x512 Kingston sticks in both of my work computers, but they run completly stock. The memory is 4 years old and have never had a problem.

But you cannot overclock the stuff. I went with Corsair when I overclocked my game computers

[NicksFXHouse]

However, despite claims that 1T is the be all end all in ram timings, I have yet to discover any serious disadvantage in benchmarking or practical use with using 2T command rate at higher speeds, but this is quite possibly specific to my own setup.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/ ... 83;start=0