what to look for when purchasing ram and processer

[NanoWarrior]

hello,     I was told both in two different point of views that I explain below.

  1st point of view:    When I go to purchase RAM or a processor I heard that ram has to have a higher front side bus rate or the same as the processor's front side bus rate.

  2nd point of view:   Make sure your ram speed is faster than your processor Ghz, such as RAM speed of pc2700 can't support a 3.2 ghz processor but it can support 2.7 ghz processor and below.

I was told that this 2nd paragragh was the wrong way to determine it and the 1st one was the right way and visa versa

   Which one of these opinions are the the right one?

   

[NanoWarrior]

anyone? I need an answer quick because I have a research report due really soon.

[MetalMilitia]

1. This is only necessary if you want the best performance out of a processor, an Athlon 2500 with an FSB of 400 should work fine with 2100(266mhz) + ram. However performance will not be as good.

2. 2700 RAM runs at 333mhz, I believe the highest speed DDR ram is 3700 which runs at 466Mhz so you wouldn’t have the ram the same speed as the processor. The only ram that goes higher than a processor is SRAM that is used on graphics cards. E.g. on a Geforce TI 4200 the GPU is 250 and the memory is about 450.

[NanoWarrior]

1. 2100(266mhz)

How can you tell how many Mhz is a front side bus out of something like pc2700 or 2.08Ghz? is there like a math equation that can be solved to figure this out?


Also....so number 1 is what you really want to look at when making a perchase right?

[MetalMilitia]

I dont know why it is named like it is, i dont think its any sort of maths equasion its just the way it is (probably a PR rating system such as Athlons processor names). I have just memorised what types are what speeds.

1. Is technically correct but not essential.