"Coolasblu" said:
1. With my 2400+ CPU running at 266Mhz, never OC'd, will I benefit from
PC3200 DDR RAM or will PC2100 be optimal. I clearly have no understanding of
the different frequencies in modern motherboards, so if I am way off with my
line of thinking, could someone put me straight! (And if thats you Paul, I
will excuse you for thinking "not him again!")
2. How do I check in WinXP to see if my USB ports are running at USB 2 ?
3. The Asus website lists memory modules it recommends. Any one bought such
modules in the UK ?
Thanks
Ravi
The basic clock on your board is 133MHz. This is multiplied by 15 to get
the 2000Mhz internal core clock of a 2400+.
As I understand it, the FSB of your processor is double pumped, to 266
megatransfers per second. The bus is 8 bytes wide, so the max data
rate is 2128 MB/sec.
The Nforce2 Northbridge memory controller is error free when it runs
the memory at the same speed as the FSB. The memory clock signal will
be 133MHz. Memory is double data rate (transfers data twice per clock,
like the processor bus). This is 266 megatransfers per second.
A DIMM is 8 bytes wide, so the transfer rate is 2128 MB/sec.
If you use a balanced amount of ram on each channel, the memory
controller can alternate between channels in dual channel mode,
for an increase in memory bandwidth. But notice, that the basic
"bandwidth balance" is already achieved while running in single
channel mode. What the dual channel mode does, is allow filling
in the gaps a little better (no PC memory is 100% efficient,
although there are memory technologies that are 100% efficient).
If the memory bus is run asynchronous (say a 266 FSB processor
with memory bus at DDR400), there is a slight additional latency
caused by any need to resynchronize between the two clock domains.
At DDR400, the memory bus runs faster, and if the internal access
time of the memory is fast enough, there can be more usable memory
bandwidth. Nforce2 seems to suffer a bit from the additional
latency of running asynchronous, so generally people don't run
the memory bus faster than the processor.
Since you already own 2x256 + 1x512 PC2100 memory, I don't see
a reason to run out and buy more memory. If you were planning
on running a faster processor or overclocking, the answer would
be different.
For example, if the processor is unlocked and the bus on the
processor were up to it, instead of 133x15, you could run 200x10,
for the same core speed. Then, a DDR400 memory could be run in
sync with the rest of the system. I don't know if your particular
processor is capable of doing this or not. Doing this kind of
configuration gives more memory bandwidth, for things like
Photoshop, compression, or some kind of rendering, but for a lot
of other desktop tasks, wouldn't make a lot of visible difference.
I would save your memory money until your next CPU upgrade (and
a CPU upgrade only makes sense if you can double your performance).
Good memory right now is too expensive. (It is like gasoline,
you are paying for someone's market manipulation.)
HTH,
Paul
