FSB Ram relationship?

Question

Can anyone explain the relationship between the FSB speed and the ram speed? I'm getting a motherboard with 1066MHz speed. The board supports 533, 667, 800 speeds of DDR2. I was wondering if the 800MHz ram would have a much better performance than the other two. Someone told me that the processor I'm getting (Core2Duo 1066MHz) runs as 266MHz x4 and the ram runs as 266 x2. He told me I would only need the 533MHz ram. Is this true? Any info on the subject is welcome. Thank you!

Answer 1

Ay yi yi. You're asking a lot of stuff here my man. ESSENTIALLY, the total speed of your is this...

FSB x MULTIPLIER = CPU SPEED

Intel apparently locks it's multipliers at 4. Thus for you...
266Mhz x 4 = 1066Mhzish. If you wanted to Overclock your board later, you can only up your CPU speed by increasing your FSB speed unlike AMD CPUs where you can mess with the multiplier too.

RAM can be a complicated thing too where you have "2" things to consider, timings and speed. The speed is what you're referring to...533 667 800 etc...then you have the timings on it which usually read something like 2.5:3:3:6 or something. Generally speaking, lower values for your timing numbers mean faster performance. So sometimes the argument can be made that if I can get lower timings at 533Mhz, that's better than running the RAM at 667 with higher timings. Confusing huh?

If you're getting a mobo from someone, it sounds like you're either building a computer or maybe upgrading a system for overclocking. Check out this article,

http://www.overclock.net/overclock.php?file=articles/overclocking-guide-intel.htm

And take the time to spend some quality time with the site too. Even if you're not overclocking, it can answer a lot of the questions you have in more detail than I have here.

Answer 2

It would be better to go for 667 mhz. Taking a 533 or 667 mhz ram doesnot matter much but still it would be better to buy 667 mhz ram. As far as the processor is concerned , i will never go for a t2250 processor. I would buy a t5600 or higher processor which are core2duo models. They have fsb of 667mhz. Remember the t2250 is only a coreduo but not a core2duo processor. If budget is a problem get core2 duo fsb667mhz processor and 533 mhz ram.