kurtdh

I currently have 2 gigs of g.skill DDR2-800. I'm going to be upgrading to 64 bit Vista in the near future, so I'd like to buy a new set of 8 gigs. Question is, does my motherboard support ram higher than DDR2-800? 388x9 FSB is the highest I can get out of my current system in a 1:1 ratio. Is there any advantage for me to get DDR2-1066 ram when I upgrade, and does my motherboard even support it? I do have the latest BIOS for my motherboard, but I'm still not sure if it supports it or not. Thanks.

Note- Typo'd in the title. It is supposed to read "Asus P5W64-WS Professional"

dasparx

i don't know, but i know, the ram wil run at the max supported speed of the mobo/chipset. so you have to search that. e.g. if the max speed is 800, 1066 ram wil run at 800.

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kurtdh

This is what the website says:
- Intel® Quad-core CPU Ready
- Intel Core™2 Extreme / Core™2 Duo Ready
- Quad-core CPU Ready
- DDR2 800/667/533
- FSB 1066/800/533
- Quad PCI-E x 16 slots

But, I'm not sure if this is taking into account any recent BIOS updates. And, I don't know if this type of thing is BIOS flashable, or if it's hardware restricted. In addition, I can't find complete patch notes for the BIOS updates coming from Asus. Best thing I can find is a revision history with just one or two changes each revision (which obviously isn't the entire notes.)

kurtdh

Bump...can anybody tell me if my motherboard supports higher than PC2-6400 ram?

-n7-

Dude, they all run higher than DDR2-800 RAM if you know what you are doing in the bios.

"Support for" just means marketing for the most part.

You need to keep in mind what ratio you run determines whether or not your RAM evens runs @ DDR2-1066, & that's all based around the FSB speed.

Here's the thing though.

On 975X like that board, running 8 GB will likely be a little bit of a challenge.
Running 8 GB @ DDR2-1066?

Not gonna happen without some extreme skill & luck.

975X doesn't do well for high RAM speeds, not to mention it'll have only tRFC of 42 max, or all AUTO settings, IIRC.

In short, that mobo isn't good for overclocking lots of 2 GB DIMMs.
And running DDR2-1066 is basically overclocking, even if the RAM is rated for it.

-n7-

To add a bit...

Your mobo shows a decent selection of ratios here.
http://hothardware.com/Articles/Asus...rboard/?page=3

You say you run 9x388.
388 4:5 = DDR2-970, might be doable, depends on how well that board does with 4:5 & subtimings...

Or 388 3:4 = DDR2-1035.

So you ain't getting DDR2-1066 anyway unless you lower your CPU overclock, which of course would make no sense.

kurtdh

You have been extremely helpful. I added rep for ya. Thanks a bunch.

I do have an additional question, though. The guy who built my system told me something about it being pointless to use dividers that put your ram at a faster speed than your FSB (i.e. 4:5 divider) because your RAM can only run as fast as your FSB allows it to in the first place.

Is there any truth to this whatsoever? Personally, I have found that this does not seem to be 100% true. The reason I say this, is because I was using super pi (2m) to benchmark the system, and found faster results using a 4:5 divider instead of a 4:4 divider. Any input regarding this would also be helpful. Thanks.

Super PI 2m:

388x9 4:5 divider, loose ram timings (spd) -------------- 36 seconds, 35.922 seconds
388x9 4:4 divider, loose ram timings (spd) -------------- 37 seconds, 36.922 seconds
388x9 4:5 divider, tighter ram timings (4-4-4-12) ------- 35.875 sec , 35.65 seconds

-n7-

It's not pointless.

A lot of clueless people like to claim there's no benefit of running a higher ratio than 1:1.

While i can certainly agree the performance increase is small, there is generally one.

Other than on nV chipsets where running 1:1 with 1T will beat all but the highest clocked higher ratios, running 1:1 is basically the slowest ratio you can possibly run.

On Intel chipsets, higher speed pretty much always results in better performance, & you will usually be needing a higher ratio that 1:1 to get that higher speed.

There are threads here, & on countless threads all over other forums on this same subject.

In short though, higher speeds are basically always better for Intel.

kurtdh

Great, thanks for taking out the time to respond. I do appreciate it.