RAM Speed

[BenS1]

Ok, I used to build a lot of PCs a few years ago but things have changed a lot since then.

So, looking on the main Aria website I see that there are lots of different speeds of DDR2 RAM (e.g. 400/533/667/800/1000/1100 MHz etc). Similarly the motherboards list the speeds that they support, so matching RAM with a motherboard is easy.

But is the RAM speed and the CPU speed completely independent, or are they controlled as multiples of the FSB speed?

i.e. When selecting my RAM do I also need to take into account the FSB speed required by the CPU I'm buying, or are the 2 completely independent these days?

Thanks for your help

Ben

[Lynx]

ITs not such a worry, the higher the spec ram, the better it will run, but conversely the cheaper ram has lower specs. To ensure best performance, only buy all the same ram and of the fastest spec you can afford, taking into account that you will only be able to put in 3gb on your machine, but 2gb is more than ample for most situations.

[Micky007]

Hi,

It doesnt really matter what CPU and what RAM you have together they will work no matter what (as long as your mobo supports it).

So take your pick :P

[mac124]

Hi Ben welcome to the forum.

there isn't a definative answer to your question im afraid as it depends on the specific motherboard. Some use multipliers so if running stock fsb speed eg 266 you would choose a specific speed of say 800mhz which would be a multi of 3 (or set the bios to auto select). The asus p5b range work like this.

some motherboards you can set the memory speed and fsb to be unlinked in which case you can set the memory speed to some random number and keep the fsb at some different number. This is normally only done when overclocking though. The Abit IN9 32x Max can use this method.

[BenS1]

Ok thanks all for your help.

Ben