Change PC2700 down to 2100?

[PastranA]

Heya all, I have a AMD Athlon XP 1800+ and 512MB of PC2700 RAM.

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ = 266mhz FSB
512MB PC2700 RAM = 333mhz

I am told that my RAM is to quick for my CPU, not that its a bad thing, but that it would work much quicker if I had PC2100 in it. Is this true? And if so is there any way that I can clock my RAM down to PC2100 which will = 266mhz and will match the CPU?

I hope this is not confusing and I don't sound stupid lol.

Thanks,
PastranA

[daveleau]

PastranA,
That is not true at all. The RAM is merely able to run faster than it is currently running in your system. Your system will run at the same speed whether it is running PC2700, PC2100 or PC3000 (there's a bunch of different speeds higher than PC2700). The only difference you might see is that you will have less problems with stability with faster ram. If you overclock (or if you don't this still applies), the higher the rating the ram, the more stable the ram is and the higher you can run the system. There is no difference in performance, just stability.

Not a stupid question at all. Don't ever worry about asking something here. You won't get flamed as long as you are nice.

Have a great week,
Dave

[JohnRoboto]

Some motherboards support PC2700 RAM even though they only have 266 mHz FSB. Atleast that's what my board says.

I've been out of the hardware game for too long....

But seriously, check your BIOS settings to see if you can set your RAM clockspeed.

[Scott Tiger]

There's no need to set the RAM clock speed. PC2700 downclocks to PC2100 just fine. I've been doing it for some time with this computer with no problems.

[PastranA]

Thanks for the helpful replies guys, And thanks dave i see what you are getting at. My motherboard does support PC2700 i know that because its working in it fine. Plus i have tried to set the ram speed, i tried to change the DRAM is that right? But i got to choose from 133, 166 and 'to speed' or something like that, I left it on 'to speed'. I guess theres no need to worry about changing it down to one of the lower numbers.

Thanks again guys.

[Uncle Bob]

I hope this is not confusing and I don't sound stupid lol.

[/B][/QUOTE]
There are no stupid questions. Only dumb mistakes.

[Scott Tiger]

Yeah, that was definitely a legit question.

Now if you were to ask "Now do I double right click or double left click on that?" I might have frowned a bit. Unfortunately I get that question at work all the time.

[PastranA]

Hehe Uncle Bob

And don't worry Scott I am not that stupid!

[pinoy87]

Originally posted by Scott Tiger
There's no need to set the RAM clock speed. PC2700 downclocks to PC2100 just fine. I've been doing it for some time with this computer with no problems.

Actually you might wanna check the settings for the ram clock since the pc2700 ram might force your system to run at 333mhz(166x2). Just double check in the BIOS that the ram is set to run at 266mhz(133x2).

[shawshank62]

yeah, check your bios and make sure its set to auto and not SPD (SPD=runs at max speed)