Hello,

I'm looking at a new board that supports both DDR2 800 and DDR2 667. But, the FSB is only 667MHz. My question is: is there a benefit of using the DDR2 800 on the 667 FSB? That is, can the DDR2 800 be fully utilized on this system? What are pros and cons of such? Does the added benefit outweigh the additional cost of the RAM?

Note: I'm not looking to overclock at all, and this is not going to be used for 3D apps (games or video editing).

Thanks.

Could you specify what mobo this is ? Although it is possible, I think it may require overclocking, they usually mention if it needs overclocking in the specs or manual.

What is this system going to be used for ? (not 3D apps ... but what ? like writing letters ?).

Also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_side_bus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_divider

The board is the new Intel D510MO. I'm not exactly sure what I'd use this for (I'm still looking at it as a bit of an experiment). But since I just don't do 3D gaming or video editing at all, I doubt I'd do it with this system.

Most likely, this would be used for typesetting (latex/troff) and general software development and/or being used for some kind of server application (web/file/mail/etc.). In any application, I'm looking at it as a _low-power_ system. I'd couple it with a low-power (<25W) LCD monitor and a SSD drive trying to get the whole thing to run on as few total watts as possible.

For this particular platform and processor I don't think that it will be a problem using the 800 MHz RAM. I'm sure the system will definitely run faster with 800 MHz RAM than 667. I don't think the price difference is that great between the two either.

Not much difference...

You might find that the 800 Ram is more available than the 677 at no great difference in price. As the 800 is more common, it would also be easier to sell on if you wanted to.

I didn't see any specifications for latency in the manual for the motherboard. Just remember to get matched pairs of reasonable quality, nothing with lower latency than necessary.

I just built one of these, and have a little to share. In fact, the board recognizes (and presumably sets itself to use) the 800 speed DDR2s. No need to worry too much about going by pairs, as dual channel is not supported. A single 2GB should work the same as two 1GB (but I have not tested mixing speeds or sizes; probably not a good thing.)

The board is perceptibly faster than the D945GCLF2(D) it replaces. In theory it is under 5% faster, but the RAM controller and video are on the CPU die, which appears to give a little more than that (but not much.)

I installed Slackware-13.0 with the current patches. The video was flaking out, with X freezing, when running with the i915 DRI module. Kernel 2.6.33-rc8 has a fix for that. Compiling with JUST intelfb and the Intel DRI drivers (as far as video is concerned) makes a world of difference. Best results for me are to load the frame buffer driver with "video=intelfb" and set the desired resolution with "vga=795" (for 1280x1024-24; see linux/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt for the full list.)