Originally posted by beet1e
He said the XP2500 ran more slowly with 400MHz memory than with 333MHz memory. I'm getting the A7N8X deluxe with the XP2600, not the XP2500 - is the 400MHz now a better choice than 300MHz memory?
He said low LATENCY is critical for the Athlons. That's those memory performance numbers... 2 2 2 6, 2.5 3 3 7 etc etc. Your 400MHz RAM will run at pretty low latencies when running at its below spec 333 MHz for the 2600. And it gives you headroom for overclocking.
Did you get the BARTON 2600 or the NON-Barton 2600?
At any rate, if you run the memory Asynchronous (i.e. CPU FSB=333, Memory speed = 400 MHz) you WILL hurt your performance.
Performance order as I understand it for memory:
1) run SYNCHRONOUS speeds between memory and CPU
2) more FSB is better
3) lower latency is better.
But 2 & 3 can switch in importance. I.E. running at CL2.5 at 400 MHz is better than CL2 at 333 MHz, but running CL2.5 at, say 345 MHz might be WORSE than running CL2 at 333 MHz.
Running CL2 at 400 MHz, is, of course, best of the combinations. But if you push your FSB to, say 410 MHz, and your latency drops to CL3.... go back to CL2 at 400MHz.
BB
