Clock Speed/ FSB/ Ram speed

mgookin · May 22, 2008

Quote from blackjack007:

basically you went overkill on the ram. you only needed 800mhz ram for a 1333 fsb mobo.

because you bought good memory, you can probably overclock the hell out of that system (assuming it's a good mobo).

No doubt I can overclock the dithers out of this thing, but I'm not looking for overclocking; just a dependable, powerful, stable system that will take much more then anything I will throw at it. And it's doing that.

The mobo is the Asus P5K64WS. I'm running 64-bit WinXP Pro and it has four PCIeX16 slots so I can wallpaper the wall in my office with monitors which I'm working on.

With regards to your statement "you only needed 800mhz ram for a 1333 fsb mobo" what is the basis of that statement? How does 800mhz keep up with 1333mhz? Is it because the CPU is running at 334x9 (3.0ghz) and the ram only needs to keep up with the 334?

Baywolf · May 22, 2008

Quote from mgookin:

No doubt I can overclock the dithers out of this thing, but I'm not looking for overclocking; just a dependable, powerful, stable system that will take much more then anything I will throw at it. And it's doing that.

The mobo is the Asus P5K64WS. I'm running 64-bit WinXP Pro and it has four PCIeX16 slots so I can wallpaper the wall in my office with monitors which I'm working on.

With regards to your statement "you only needed 800mhz ram for a 1333 fsb mobo" what is the basis of that statement? How does 800mhz keep up with 1333mhz? Is it because the CPU is running at 334x9 (3.0ghz) and the ram only needs to keep up with the 334?

Did you read my first two posts? Those numbers have nothing to do with each other. Don't try to match them up.

mgookin · May 22, 2008

Quote from Tight Face:

Did you read my first two posts? Those numbers have nothing to do with each other. Don't try to match them up.

Yes I did read the first two posts. The first of which I could not figure out what you were saying and on the second one, I did read that article at wiki which I had read before. It does a good job explaining logic in a system, but does not provide the mathematics on how it all fits together, pretty much like all the rest of the information out there (Tom's, etc.).

But what you just posted above informing me that those numbers have nothing to do with each other is exactly the style of information which I was looking for when I started this thread. Any more information on the subject that you or anyone else can provide will be much appreciated, including and especially, what relationships do the numbers have or not have and what are the mathematics behind it all. Thanks!

Bernard111 · May 22, 2008

Quote from mgookin:

Looking at this subject objectively, what can people in here tell me about matching clock speed to FSB and Ram speed?

When you have a FSB / DDR ratio of 1:1 you have no bottlenecks. You can use an utility such as CPU-ID to check it.
The fact Dell or other manufacturers sell system with RAM @ 800 Mhz is bc it's cheaper.
However an overlocking forum could help you better to clarify on your questions.

mgookin · May 22, 2008

Quote from Bernard111:

When you have a FSB / DDR ratio of 1:1 you have no bottlenecks. You can use an utility such as CPU-ID to check it.
The fact Dell or other manufacturers sell system with RAM @ 800 Mhz is bc it's cheaper.
However an overlocking forum could help you better to clarify on your questions.

That's what OCZ had told me (about RAM speed being same or higher then FSB). Glad to hear someone second that one. Thanks!

I did run Prime95 to burn in/ test the system. It ran 45 minutes at 100% on all 4 cores at 3.0ghz with zero errors. Every time I made a change (bios mem timing settings, etc.) I re-ran the Prime95 and every time it worked great.

DataCruncher · May 23, 2008

Quote from Tums:

You have it mixed up.

Page File is a type of virtual memory,
but virtual memory is NOT Page File.

is there a way to do this(as a way to speed up trading applications without adding more RAM):

designate your trading applicatons as first priority in regards to RAM usage(and/or in regards to virtual memory usage)
Less time sensitive applications could be designated as lower priority.

How do you do this?

gnome · May 23, 2008

Quote from DataCruncher:

is there a way to do this(as a way to speed up trading applications without adding more RAM):

designate your trading applicatons as first priority in regards to RAM usage(and/or in regards to virtual memory usage)
Less time sensitive applications could be designated as lower priority.

How do you do this?

Windows does this as a basic function. The files which get accessed the most are in CPU cache, next most are in RAM... some others are paged out.

So long as you have 300MB or so of "Physical Memory Available" at full load, adding more RAM will not help.

Tums · May 23, 2008

Quote from DataCruncher:
is there a way to do this(as a way to speed up trading applications without adding more RAM):

If shortage of memory is the cause of slowing down your computer, then the short and direct answer is a resounding NO !

Pls see my previous post to see if you are running short of memory.

kiwi_trader · May 23, 2008

Quote from gnome:

Windows does this as a basic function. The files which get accessed the most are in CPU cache, next most are in RAM... some others are paged out.

So long as you have 300MB or so of "Physical Memory Available" at full load, adding more RAM will not help.

Thats half true gnome.

But you can do things with more ram that do help. For example I have 4G (of which XP can only see 3.5 anyway) but do two things that make a big speed difference:
- I have no page file so there is no page file overhead and unless you run some very weird software nothing actually requires page file once you have 4G.
- I run a 400M ramdisk on that and have SierraChart, JTS (tws folder), Firefox and Firefox cache etc all on the ram disk.

I actually did it all to reduce disk accesses (I minimize any form of noise and thought my disk drives would last longer without all that data pounding away at them) but it makes a huge difference to the speed of those applications. Very very responsive.

You don't need any of this but RAM is so so cheap now you might as well do it.

sg20 · May 23, 2008

Quote from DataCruncher:

is there a way to do this(as a way to speed up trading applications without adding more RAM):

designate your trading applicatons as first priority in regards to RAM usage(and/or in regards to virtual memory usage)
Less time sensitive applications could be designated as lower priority.

How do you do this?

The RAM will automatically load when you run an application, 1G memory would be more than sufficient for your trading activities. Some softwares will also use virtual memory as an extra storage in case RAM runs out or to store permanent data if the software you use designed it to run that way, in order to speed up your computer you can set virtual memory to run "for best performance", and set to the highest number availble.

Another thing you to help free up the RAM is to shut down most applications that you don't need use right away, they are set in MSCONFIG:

start -> run -> msconfig -> startup. Turn off every thing except firewall, antispy, antivirus softwares.

Nest step is to delete some file that may be in startup.

start -> all programs -> startup

You'll also need to delete some file that are may start in registration, for this you'll have to fiddle some but be careful not to mess around or you'll crash the computer.

Another setting is in Service, for this you would also need to determine which application will need to run on auto and which on manual or to be disabled. Remember to use system restore in case you screwed up.

sg20