New to Athlon 64, few questions

[AlNom]

Does memory have to be in-sync with the FSB at all times? So if I have DDR433, the only way to use the RAM at that speed (217Mhz) is by overclocking the FSB to 217Mhz?

What is important to know about HyperTransport settings?

I've got 2-2-2-5 PC3500 memory, but I've been hearing that tRAS is better to be set at a higher....number. What's the deal with that?


(I've just got a 3000+, Winchester Core I believe...)

 

[hoom]

With the onboard mem controller, the FSB is now the Hypertransport link & the overclocking process is a bit different to the normal one.
The memory bus clock is dependant on the core clock which is dependant on the Hypertransport/FSB clock.

 

[The_Wolf_Who_Cried_Boy]

What is important to know about HyperTransport settings?

Don't run it over 1 Ghz.

I've got 2-2-2-5 PC3500 memory, but I've been hearing that tRAS is better to be set at a higher....number. What's the deal with that?

Corsair has a good artical of the benefits of various memory timings.
http://www.corsairmemory.com/corsair/products/guides/AN501_Latency_Settings_and_Performance.pdf

 

[AlNom]

Ah... thank you!

Definitely different than what I'm used to with the Athlon XP.

 

[chavvdarrr]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2469&p=2
check this too

 

[Supasso]

Good read on tRAS.

http://www.mushkin.com/doc/techSupport/papers/latency.asp

 

[AlNom]

thanks

 

[AlNom]

What's so important about command rate? I've never seen options for it before. Why the big deal? Is it true that only Via and SiS support 2T cmd rate?

 

[hoom]

Command rate 2 = lots slower than CR1.
CR1 sends requests to RAM literally twice as frequently.

 

[AlNom]

oh.

Off-Topic Question: What is the purpose of Dual Gigabit lan?

 

[hoom]

Uhm, ePenis?
Lets you use a PC as a router?