ive got a EPoX 8K7A+ mobo.... uses DDR.... ive got PC2100 ram in it..... would i be able to buy a stick of mushkin 512 PC3000 ram??? would it accept it???
looks like that board has a fsb of 266mhz.. fastest DDR that it make full use of would be PC-2100.. pc-3000 runs at a 366mhz bus, and so on.. Although if you got the money, check out mushkin's cas 2 memory.. http://www.mushkin.com/cgi-bin/Mush...731270f3342740c0a80102063b+EN/products/990856 heard pretty good things about it.. -scoob8000
I'm upgrading to this mobo: EPOX 8K3A+ KT333CE DDR333 266MHz FSB ATA133 RAID Socket A MOTHERBOARD - RETAIL would it work on that??? i think it will cause it says "DDR333"
The PC3000 RAM should work just fine in your present board. scoob- you can UNDERCLOCK memory. Happens a lot. I have a stick of PC166 in my celeron box, chugging along at a happy 66MHz. The same works for DDR.
As Isaac said, underclocking is ok. I've got 512MB of PC133 in my old board which only supports PC100, works fine. Putting faster memory than your board can properly support can help with overclocking, because there will be an excess of bandwidth available afaik. I'm going to be putting PC3200 in my PC3000 board.
Actually, the reason for faster memory helping with oc is due to the chip timings. Looking at standard SDR memory, if you look at the actual chips on the DIMM, you'll see that the chip number probably ends with one number which is separated from the others. This number is the chip timing, in nanoseconds. A regular PC133 CAS 2 DIMM is likely to have 75, which actually indicates 7.5 nanoseconds. PC133 CAS 3 may have 8ns chips, and PC100 can get away with 10ns. If you take the inverse of 10ns you will see that you get 100MHz, and vice versa. However, not all memory is equal. I have two DIMMs in my machine which were sold to me as PC133 CAS 3, but the chips on it are 6ns. Inverse of 6ns is 166MHz, and these DIMMs run perfectly happily at 142MHz CAS2 with all memory settings set to highest performance (4 way interleave, "Turbo" timings, CAS2, etc) on one of the most demanding SDR boards ever (the KT7A). These timings indicate the MAXIMUM speed that the memory can handle however. They can go slower than their maximum speed, as shown by the use of 166MHz chips for 133MHz memory. As I mentioned, I run another 166MHz chipped DIMM at 66MHz. The one thing you have to watch out for is the arrangement of memory. Many motherboards seem to have problems with memory which is built on 64Mbit chips. I have an old 440LX motherboard which doesn't like 128MB DIMMS that I've tried in it, although the manual says it should.
how much of a difference will i notice if i upgrade both my mobo and the ram. PC2100 RAM to PC3000 RAM and the AMD761 chipset board to VIA333 Chipset board.... Will the new board take advantage of the new RAM?
The board will.... The CPU won't. PC2100 already provides more memory bandwidth than the AthlonXP can use, and the only benefits offered by PC2700 or faster are the lower latencies involved with the faster memory (assuming both the 2100 and 2700 to have the same CL). This is the reason that the performance benefit of the KT333 is minimal/non-existant compared with KT266a. We saw a similar situation with early DDR boards compared with top SDR boards, when the CPUs were slower. It was only beyond about 1GHz that the Athlon came anywhere close to being able to use more bandwidth than SDR supplied, and DDR showed no benefit with slower athlon chips and with most durons. Certainly PC2100 has more than adequate BANDWIDTH. It is now LATENCY that is the issue. In other words, you'll see a small improvement, but really not enough to be worth buying the new board unless you have some specific problem with the present one. The main benefit of KT333 over older chipsets is feature provision, such as USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 and smart card/memory stick interfacing, rather than performance.
i think im goin w/ the GF4 Ti4200 - how much of a difference will i notice w/ that and my current GF2 MX400?
Lots. The more recent NVidia cards have drastically improved image quality (although your monitor might not make much of the difference, but I can assure you it's big). And you will be able to play games in 1280x1024 as fast as your MX can manage in 800x600. Probably faster.
Seriously though, a good monitor has got to be worth spending money on. I regard it as the most important part of the computer, because it's the bit you spend hours staring at. Keyboard and mouse are next, because they're the bits you interact with. 19", nothing comes with a higher recommendation from me (for whatever that counts for) than the Sony G420. Ask Seb835 about that one.
thats like double the price of any other though... and i can get a better dot pitch on other cheaper monitors...
It isn't all about dot pitch. Overall quality, colour rendition, brightness, contrast, etc, etc Yes, the Sony is expensive, but worth it. If you can't afford it, look at models like the Iiyama VM454 (although I have a personal thing against iiyamas), Lacie Electron Blue (professional CAD monitor, at a bargain price. Also has the "not beige" appeal), Sony E430 (although I feel this offers less than others at the price, it is still a sony, with the quality that suggests), and whatever Mitsubishi's top model is. The mistake not to make is buying something other than an Aperture Grille. Aperture Grilles are far and away superior to flat shadow mask tubes. The other thing to avoid is variable-pitch monitors. A constant 0.24 aperture grille is what you want to be looking for.
