Another RAM question...Athlon Xp2600 + KT6 Delta mobo.

[The Fishmeister]

I want to upgrade my memory from 512 to a gig. Previous advice suggested a graphics card u/g as more bang for buck. Have done from Fx5200 to Sapphirre 9600SE. Did'nt realise the Xt was the boy! But half the price.

Running MSI Kt6 Delta mobo with Xp2600 Barton. Current RAM is PCworld DDR 333, CL 2.5. Two things here: I now know that o/c needs decent RAM. And I'm running the CPU at 181Mhz, up from the 166Mhz. Need decent RAM to push it, as I believe that this Cpu is known for running faster.

But the board will run up to 200FSB, so is the fact that the RAM is at 333 the main reason the cpu won't run any faster without stability issues? Do I need to be buying DDR 400 to upgrade, with the intention of pushing the cpu further? And will Kingston do the trick or does it have to be mega buck Corsair. Or will the Corsair value jobby do the trick for tighter timings.?

The BIOS setup does give a 'High performance' option, which at the moment the pc laughs at...so RAM capable of tighter timings seems to be the future.

And the mobo has 3 dimm slots, up to 1gb on each. Currently doing 2 x 256, presume I'll have to get 2 x 512?

Sorry its a little long winded, but would appreciate so advice. Cheers

Alun.

[BUFF]

KT600 doesn't have a PCI/AGP lock does it?
Probably running out of spec - might want to look at your divider settings.

[The Fishmeister]

Posted by Buff...
'KT600 doesn't have a PCI/AGP lock does it?
Probably running out of spec - might want to look at your divider settings.'
__________________

Can't see it,[a lock] in the manual. AGP fast write is enabled. Options of 1x,2x,4x, or auto.Got it on auto as 9600 obviously 8x. Running out of spec? Divider settings? Prey what are they Buff?. Ta for your help btw.

Alun.

[Rave]

On Via chipset Athlon boards the PCI and AGP busses run at a fixed proportion of the FSB speed as they're all generated by a single clock. In the range 166-199 it's 5:2:1 I.E. the AGP bus runs at 2/5 of 166 or 66MHz, and the PCI bus at 1/5 of 166 or 33MHz. At 200MHz FSB the 6:2:1 divider kicks in. If you were to run at an FSB of 190 then your AGP would be running at 76Mhz which is far enough out of spec to cause a lot of graphics cards to crash, so a lot of people who can't run at 190 actually can run at 200 without issue.

If you don't mind risking having to clear CMOS (**and taking a slight risk of borking something, this is at your own risk**) you could set the FSB to 200 and see what happens. To increase your chances of success, increase the RAM voltage to 2.8V (or as high as it'll go if less than that) and slacken off the timings to 3-4-4-10, and increase the CPU voltage to 1.75V (or again as high as it'll go if less than that). Then see if it posts/boots. Keep a close watch on temperatures. If that works, then you can start tweaking RAM settings etc. to optimise things.

This is all assuming that you processor is multilplier locked; if it isn't then just increase the multi to see how high you can get it.

Rich :¬)

[The Fishmeister]

Woah! That will be me on a quick learning curve then...lol. I will see if I can increase the multiplier as that looks a lot easier. If not then I'll have a pop at your advice. Thanks for that Rave.

Can anyone answer the questions on the actual RAM I need or will the pcworld stuff actually do? I'm doubting that....

Alun.