Question about On board memory controller for a64

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Hacp

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I heard from somewhere that using the ram divider to raise clock speed instead of using 1:1 won't affect performance in games due to a64's onboard memory controller. Is this true?
 
you don't use the RAM divider to raise clock speed anyway.......you raise your clock speed by raising the HTT from 200 and then depending on your RAM you use a RAM divider if necessary....because if you wanted 3GHz on a 3200+ AMD64 then you'd need 300x10 and if your RAM can only handle 275MHz then you'd have to use a divider....at those speeds it really doesn't matter if you're using 1:1 or not because it's all fast as hell anyway and you'll have nothing but increased memory bandwidth and clock speeds all around
 
Yes i know this, but I'm staying sometihng different. pretend you have a athlon 64 3200. What I'm saying is that I heard that if you put the divider at 5:4 and raise the HTT to 250, you will not notice a difference in gaming than if you used 1:1 with fsb and Htt both at 250. That is what I heard.
 
From http://www.madshrimps.be/printart.php?articID=325

"When Athlon 64 was released to the public many tried their tested tactics on this new platform, getting the HTT (A64Â’s equivalent to the FSB) as high as possible to gain extra performance. But A64 has an on-die memory controller,unlike the Athlon XP or P4, this controller allows you to run memory asynchronous to the HTT. Running memory async to the system bus is of course nothing new, but what is new, is the fact that performance between a system running memory async versus one running memory synchronous is virtually non-existent.

Sure there will be applications and benchmarks which will show you a difference favoring the synchronous 1:1 running system, but overall this increase in performance is nothing compared to the gains we so accustomed to have when doing the same on Athlon XP or P4.

So here today we are focusing on proving that Gamers donÂ’t need expensive memory to get the most out of their Athlon 64 system."
 
Memory has never had a huge impact on gaming besides going from like 512mb to 1gb of RAM which basically smoothes out any (if any) little "jagged" spots in the game where it might hold up for a split second and of course loading times....

The fact is normally on AMD64's you see about 6.4gb/sec of memory bandwidth...it would stay the same if you kept the RAM at 200 and raised the HTT to 250 of course, but if you did it 1:1 your memory bandwidth would go up significantly probably more than 7gb/sec memory bandwidth....the only real way you can get an idea of what kind of performance you got from it is with synthetic benchmarks....there might be 1-2FPS difference but you will never notice that of course not......those increasements in memory bandwidth are more for overall system performance not solely gaming.

Even on a socket A system if you were running the RAM at 250 you'd go from about 3gb/sec bandwidth to like 3.7gb/sec and you still wouldn't notice it within gaming........games rely heavil on your GPU of course so unless you're drastically raising the CPU or RAM to ridiculous levels you'd never notice it that way.

In response to this part:

So here today we are focusing on proving that Gamers donÂ’t need expensive memory to get the most out of their Athlon 64 system."
That's a given....as I've said time and time again then only reason you need expensive memory is simply for overclocking because valueRAM will not do it......expensive RAM really has nothing to do with gaming at all as you'd never notice the difference between 2-2-2-5 RAM and 3-3-3-8 RAM in your system.
 
Thanks for clarifying. I stumbled upon that site and I was like what?, since I always thought that you needed to increase your fsb at the same rate you increase your htt to have optimal gaming performance when ocing. Now I know gaming is more dependant on the video card.
 
if you used the RAM divider, the memory communication is only as fast as the slower of either the RAM speed, or the HTT
the only reason I see you to use it, is to raise the core speed of the CPU. which, if you can afford the cooling to do this, chances are you can afford the FX CPU which you can just raise the multiplier on anyway to get the better core speed. and/or you could also afford better RAM, which you can get good speed with making the RAM divider pointless anyway
 
How about in my example with the 5/4 divider at 250 Htt. That doesn't require expensive cooling, and also as the test in my link shows, doesnt affect game performance significantly.
 
does the 5/4 mean RAM/HTT or HTT/RAM?
if it is the former, I really see no point. as the RAM cannot communicate more than the HTT speed in that case
if it is the latter, then it could work...
 
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