Intel Dividers

[Tim_Cdy]

I had a comment in a post elsewhere about my thoughts on installing some hot System Ram in my lappy. Part of the answer was regarding synchronous Ram. Is it still very relevant to current Chips?

[Calum]

Not really.
RAM speeds generally don't have much real-world impact on performance, synchronous/asynchronous has even less.

[grandpa_simpson]

I'm not sure I follow Calum.   Ram speeds may not affect performance considerably, but Synchronous and Asynchronous are still relevant, unless I've gotten it wrong somewhere.   In traditional systems as many people still use, synchronous means that your ram and front side bus are running at the same speed, which is controlled by the fsb..  Asynchronous means that they are not running at the same speed (in traditional systems, in some cases if you increase your fsb speed, you might want to decrease the ram speed, if the board allows it)

In newer boards with the memory controller inside the cpu, the principle still applies somewhat..  The "base clock", in at least some newer systems has replaced the front side bus in traditional systems.  The base clock controls cpu speed, QPI, and ram and from what I've read in some of the board manuals ram speed can still be increased or throttled back, depending on how you want to set the base clock..   

[Calum]

"Relevant" in terms of what?  I was meaning in terms of performance, you shouldn't see a drastic performance difference between having your RAM faster than the bus speed (or vice versa) or the same as it.
You can of course adjust RAM speeds using dividers and your FSB/base clock/HT, sure.

[grandpa_simpson]

The way you used "synchronous" and "asynchronous" in your first post kind of confused me.  It seemed like you were referring to them as actuall speeds instead of modes, deaming them "irrelevant" as I said...  sorry

[Calum]

Sorry for the confusion.  I intended those as two separate points - RAM speeds have little impact on performance, and neither do synchronous/asynchronous modes.
That's what I get when using a laptop keyboard, I type as little as posile because I detest using it.

[grandpa_simpson]

Is the laptop always in one place ?....thought about using an external keyboard ?

or, maybee get yourself one of those old Nintendo power gloves and go wireless         don't know if that would work though... I'm sure some hardware hacker out there has done something like that.

[Calum]

This is purely temporary, I hate laptops but I'm on holiday, and lugging along a >30kg desktop, plus keyboard, monitor, mouse etc isn't exactly practical (or cheap).

[Tim_Cdy]

Realised I missed out the Intel bit in my OP. The merits of sync/async are obvious to me as being an unemployed overclocker, no RIG at the mo. Sorry for the confusion guys. Have Intel moved away from the 1.1 divider.That was the question I should have asked it as

[grandpa_simpson]

Have Intel moved away from the 1.1 divider.

Not that I know of, but not all boards are going to allow memory dividers anyway.  In one of my computers I have an Intel board.. With the latest bios update I was able to go from no memory dividers to at least two dividers to choose from.  But keep in mind that memory dividers are not always apparent when viewing bios settings, for example, some BIOSs might display dividers in a format similar to 1:1, 1.5:2, 1:2...     My bios displays flat speeds, (400 MHz or 533 MHz), if I want to obtain the actual ratio here I have to do a little math.  The raw speed of my front side bus is 200 MHz.  If I use the "400 Mhz" speed for my ram, I take the fsb speed and divide it by the base-speed of the speed I have selected, which happens to be 200 MHz (remember were using ddr)..So, 200/200 = 1  giving me a 1:1 ratio.  If I went with the 533 Mhz speed (which would force asynchronous mode), I would once again take the fsb speed and divide it by 266 MHz (half the selected speed) which gives me a  FSB:DRAM ratio of 3:4, which is the way CPU-Z displays it...  If you want to look at this in terms of the other way around, you'd use the DRAM:FSB ratio, which would give you 4:3, which equals to 1.33:1 ratio... IN ths case the ram is running at 1.33 X the speed of the front side bus..

hope this helps a little

[Tim_Cdy]

Nicely done there. That should be in a OC FAQ  Not an Intel owner up until my T9400, so I assumed that all Intel boards gave you that divider support in bios.

[grandpa_simpson]

That should be in a OC FAQ 

hey thx   

To be honest, I haven't overclocked much, I just know a few things