As all power users know, quality memory is a must. What is quality memory? Well, for overclockers, having quality memory spec'd to run at overclocked settings is essential in finding that right balance of speed and stability. Once you've established the upper limit, the memory timings are the next steps in tweaking your performance. Quality memory is also about having ram that simply won't crash or riddle your tax program with accounting errors.
There is no shortage of overclocked ram. Despite the JEDEC committee not sanctioning anything past PC2700, those specifications are so mid-2002. Enthusiasts think this, and it's obvious various manufacturers do as well, as they are pumping out PC3000, PC3200, PC3500, and even PC3700 modules like no tomorrow.
It can be argued that these speeds are unnecessary, given that the fastest FSB supported by any CPU (AMD 2700+ and 2800+) right now is 166FSB. At 2.7GB/sec of bandwidth provided by the processor, it isn't enough to saturate the memory at those speeds, and can create problems with latency when the FSB is run asyncronous with the memory clock. Of course, that can be eased by overclocking the CPU, which is the whole point of overclocking fast ram to begin with. You see, you are better off running the ram syncronous with the processor FSB. The reason why faster ram is needed is that vanilla PC2700 will probably run syncronous, anywhere from 166FSB to 190FSB. Even if it can do higher, it likely won't do it at the most agressive memory timings, let alone at PC2700. Our Crucial PC2700, for example, won't do CAS2 at 166FSB, which hurts performance of the system overall.
Read the review here
Apr 2, 2003, 10:59 PM
