Ronald Cole said:
I'm considering buying this m/b and would like to put the fastest CPU
and RAM I can on it, but the manual is a bit confusing.
If I read it correctly, I should be able to drop the latest LGA775
Pentium 4 EE (the 3.73 GHz Prescott 1066MHz FSB) in with four sticks
of Samsung M378T6453FG0-CE6.
Also, that CPU supports EM64T, correct? So I should be able to run
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition on it, right? Is there any reason
I wouldn't want to? If not, which video card with STABLE 64-bit
drivers is recommended?
Is setting AI Overclocking and DRAM Frequency to "Auto" enough to get
such a system to detect that it can run at FSB 1066 and actually do
so?
Thanks in advance!
Normally I'd suggest starting with the processorfinder.intel.com
web page, but not all the processors seem to be properly listed
there.
If you start at the processor product page:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/index.htm?iid=HPAGE+header_products_processors&
then go to the extreme edition page, it says EM64T support is
there. (I prefer to see the support listed versus the exact model
of processor, as web pages like this are likely not updated
frequently.)
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/pentium4HTXE/index.htm
Proof of EM64T is in the datasheet for the 3.73GHz/FSB1066 processor.
http://download.intel.com/design/Pentium4/datashts/30638201.pdf
This Intel chipset page says DDR2-533 CAS3? is what Intel considers
the top performance level...
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/925xe/index.htm
The natural (1:1) clock ratio would be FSB1066 and DDR2-533. Both
use 266MHz clock. The Asus motherboard manual mentions support
for DDR2-711, which is a 3:4 ratio from CPU to memory. I think this
comes from Intel's support for both DDR2-400 and DDR2-533 when the
FSB is FSB800 - the 3:4 ratio comes from the attempt to support
DDR2-533 at FSB800. Then, when you run at FSB1066, the supported
memory speeds should become DDR2-533 and DDR2-711.
This Samsung page lists your 512MB memory choice as 5-5-5 memory
at DDR2-667.
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Sem.../UnbufferedDIMM/M378T6453FG0/M378T6453FG0.htm
Here are some alternate memories:
DDR2-800 at 5-5-5-10, available as 2x512MB or 2x1024MB.
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_ddr2_pc2_6400_gold_dual_channel
DDR2-800 at 4-3-3-8, available as 2x512MB
http://www.ocztechnology.com/produc...6400_platinum_enhanced_bandwidth_dual_channel
The only comparison of two versus four DIMMs I can find.
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2288&p=3
This article compares running at 711 versus 533, and winrar
gets a 2% performance improvement from the faster memory.
This article also explains what memory settings are available.
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041101/index.html
Anandtech reviews performance of some low latency DDR2.
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2306
An earlier review of first gen DDR2, suggesting overclocking
works very well with DDR2 memories.
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2112
It is possible four sticks of the lower latency RAM will run
at the same settings as two sticks of the higher latency
RAM (of the OCZ found above - and assuming a +1 CAS
latency penalty for using four DIMMs). It is too bad that
Wesley did not list the command rate when running four sticks,
or provide even a memtest86 bandwidth reading for that config,
so we could get some idea of whether the chipset suffers
a penalty with four sticks.
With the memory ratings not lining up with the motherboard
settings, it makes it very hard to find just
the right combination of RAM to use. 2x1024 would be a
desirable RAM configuration, if some with decent latency
could be found. Maybe those 5-5-5 DDR2-800 ones above would
be the least hassle to use, if 711 was your only target.
The OCZ-4200EB 3-2-2-8 2x1024MB memory could be run at
DDR2-533, leaving DDR2-711 as an overclocking experiment.
I cannot find enough review data to decide which is the best
course of action.
The FSB1066 processor has three BSEL pins on the bottom. They
automatically encode FSB1066 as the desired operating
frequency. But, I would never trust totally automatic settings.
At the very least, get a copy of CPUZ and verify that the BIOS
is setting the frequencies and memory timings according to the
manufacturer's specs. Depending on which memory strategy you
use, you could spend quite a bit of time tuning the memory
manually for best performance. The DDR2-800 5-5-5 memory
would be close to automatic, but not very aggressive. (I.e.
Asus may not select DDR2-711 by default, but may require the
user to switch from a default of DDR2-533. So, you may have
at least one setting to make, to get memory running at 711.
I doubt that decision would be automatically done for you.)
Post back with your experiences, as there is not a lot of
info on DDR2 to be had.
HTH,
Paul
