Can these mobos use PC2700 DRAM?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dale Brisket
  • Start date Start date
D

Dale Brisket

I have my eye on the A8N-E and the A8N5X and would like to use the 1GB of
PC2700 memory I am currently running, at least til I can upgrade that too.
Both these board show PC3200 as the memory spec. Can I use my old memory?
TIA.
 
Dale Brisket said:
I have my eye on the A8N-E and the A8N5X and would like to use the 1GB of
PC2700 memory I am currently running, at least til I can upgrade that too.
Both these board show PC3200 as the memory spec. Can I use my old memory?
TIA.
According to Crucial, yes. But should they?
 
The normal memory frequency of current Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPUs would be
DDR 400 (PC3200). However, if the board that you mention are similar to
other Asus boards, you'll be able to set a memory divider in the BIOS to run
DDR333 (PC2700) memory at its rated frequency, while operating the CPU at
its nominal frequency.

I presume that there'll be a performance penalty, but it may not be large.
(It's common for A64 mainboards to fall back to DDR333 if all 4 DIMM sockets
are populated, anyway. I guess that the memory controller may be less
reliable with the greater load.)

On the other hand, a 2X512 MB pair of DDR400 sells for about $80US
(www.newegg.com ).

Address scrambled. Replace nkbob with bobkn.
 
Bob Knowlden said:
The normal memory frequency of current Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPUs would be
DDR 400 (PC3200). However, if the board that you mention are similar to
other Asus boards, you'll be able to set a memory divider in the BIOS to run
DDR333 (PC2700) memory at its rated frequency, while operating the CPU at
its nominal frequency.

I presume that there'll be a performance penalty, but it may not be large.
(It's common for A64 mainboards to fall back to DDR333 if all 4 DIMM sockets
are populated, anyway. I guess that the memory controller may be less
reliable with the greater load.)

On the other hand, a 2X512 MB pair of DDR400 sells for about $80US
(www.newegg.com ).
Good info. Thanks.
 
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