Memory Speed

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caleb2438

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Hello again! To what extent does faster memory better your system? I have a 2.4 p4 with 533 bus. When I looked at the ddr memory it said it was 266mhz. I thought it was 333mhz. Could my mother board support 333mhz and 266? Is 266 much slower? Thanks again!!
- Caleb
 
Faster memory doesn't really "speed up" your PC. Speaking genericly, you want whatever type and speed of memory your particular PC supports. Putting in faster memory will not in itself change the speed of your PC one bit. Putting in slower than required memory will usually cause crashes rather than slow performance.

While there are lots of little things you can do to speed up a PC, the only way faster memory can help is if you are overclocking - that is, running either the CPU or the system bus at higher-than-recomended speeds. If you push up the speed of the bus you may need faster than normal RAM to keep up. But I generally avoid overclocking, especially on recording PCs. The extra bit of speed you gain is not worth (at least to me) the reduced reliability and shortened CPU life that comes with it.
 
expecitally consitering that RAM speeds are in the single diget nano seconds... If I remember correctly
 
Now that the memory bus is isolated from the system bus on AMD and Pentium systems, you often do have a choice of what memory speeds you can run. It will be motherboard/chipset specific, so consult your manual.

In the real world I can't imagine there being much of a difference between 266 and 333, unless you have a really fast processor and are really seriously working it with a memory intensive application (say imaging, video, games)....even then I couldn't imagine more than a few percentage points of improved performance, probably not worth the money (unless you were getting a new system to start with).

I have read some motherboard reviews where systems perform abnormally poor when not using the memory speed that the chipset was designed to run at....but, those could very well be isolated cases. If your system appears to be running fine, it probably is. If your receipt says "333Mhz", though, then you better raise some heck.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Also keep in mind that "jacking" up the FSB in order to "overclock"
will wreak havoc on other devices located on the Front Side Bus.
Overclocking becomes more of a challenge to do (kinda like getting something for nothing) than simply seeking performance enhancements.
 
caleb2438 said:
Hello again! To what extent does faster memory better your system? I have a 2.4 p4 with 533 bus. When I looked at the ddr memory it said it was 266mhz. I thought it was 333mhz. Could my mother board support 333mhz and 266? Is 266 much slower? Thanks again!!
- Caleb
Click to expand...
When you say you looked at the Ram speed, are you looking at the stick itself or within your software system specs. ??
 
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