Overclocking DDR300 to DDR333 ?

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quantass

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My system has 256MB OCZ PC3200 Premier, 256MB PCZ PC2700 Basic, and 256MB Micron PC2100 (which I beleive is somtimes labeled Corsair PC2400). My Athlon XP 2800+ runs at a FSB of 166MHZ and so I would like to have all of my DDR sticks to be running at 333MHZ. Unfortunately the Micron PC2100 is kicking my ass.

Now i could go out and but yet another stick but Im wondering if changing my BIOS's FSB setting from AUTO to a manual 166/333MHZ will force all DDR sticks to run at 333MHZ rate, including the PC2100. If the Micron stick's chips are used for a Corsair PC2400 which is DDR300 will setting the FSB to 333MHZ really make that much of a differnce?

1. Can the PC2100/PC2400 stick run stable at 333MHZ?

2. Is there a chance i could damage the stick or the other sticks by running at such a speed?

3. Is it possible the stick could run fine for a few days/months but at some future time fail producing errors due to the higher FSB, or does an initial and thorough memory test which reports everything as fine label the stick as fully functional for life?

Thanks.
 
yeah you CAN overclock it and set the frequency to 333 but it'll be underclocking the PC3200 obviously. As to wether it can handle it...well thats kind of a gamble. If you look in my sig I got PC2700 and PC3200 but my CPU FSB is only 266.....I have in the memory section set to 'By SPD' and my motherboard takes it upon itself to set my memory to 398MHz just 2MHz shy of the 400 for the PC3200 RAM. So my PC2700 is overclocked and has been that way for quite some time and I haven't had a hitch with it.

I can't guarantee you the same results...all I can say is..it's possible...computers are fickle like that, what might work for one guy might not work for you. I would put in that one stick of PC2100 and see if you can get it to run stable at 333, if you can then add another stick...check for errors...then add the final stick and again check for errors. Yes theres always a chance of ruining something when overclocking although I'm not 100% sure if one RAM chip couldn't handle being overclocked I think only that chip would suffer not your others and the computer would resume working upon removal of the bad chip. Yes it is also possible for it to run fine for a week then it decides that the weeks worth of load was too much then quit on ya, but like I said I've had my PC2700 running at 398MHz for quite some time now with no problems mixed with PC3200 RAM which is also a different maker.
 
Im curious. Does it make much difference having the PC2100 stick in a different DIMM slot? I figure my system wont be using up the entire 768MB of ram too often and so if the PC2100 stick is gonna die have it located in the last DIMM slot and the erors it generates wont be seen as much. Is this how the system handles memory -- from DIMM slot 1 downward filling each module. Come to think of it I remember some programming where i would allocate something off the heap, various chunks, then freeing it possibly fragmenting memory, and so I'd assume the OS would get the largest/smallest chunk from "wherever" it can. Beats me...

Some good info you've provided me!
 
Does it make much difference having the PC2100 stick in a different DIMM slot?

Hmm...couldn't tell ya the answer to that. If it's a bad memory stick it'll halt up your entire system, it won't load up your OS and then when you go to need more memory it THEN access's it and crashes ya see? So basically it's like, either it works or it doesn't, no real inbetween. Pretty sure it uses all of them at once, only reason I say this, is because it has to be accessed simply to tell you that you have 768 when you go to PROPERTIES on 'My Computer' ya know? There's a program like TweakUI that lets you free up memory, but that's not the same as allocating it to certain programs or anything like that.
 
All your memory will slow down to the slowest memory speed, i.e. PC2100. This is the same for hard drives running on the same IDE cable.

If I were you, I would remove the PC2100 stick.
 
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