Ram Speed Help please....

[CoolChris]

I have just bought 1GB of PC3200 DDR400 of Kingston Ram. Now the problem is when I go into bios, all I see is 266mhz speed and Auto. I do not see any speed higher than this. What gives?
Is it that my processor is holding the speeds back?
It is a 2.2Ghz Intel Celeron P4 processor. I am thinking of upgrading sometime to a normal P4 3 ghz prescott..but not too soon.
My motherboard is Asus P4P800s with a capability of 800FSB using Prescott technology.
It is just the puzzling thing about not getting the full benefit of my PC3200 memeory sticks.
Anyone have any input please?

[Gizmo]

I don't have one of these boards, but I was under the impression that they offered some overclocking options. Are you saying that you can't change the 266 and Auto settings to anything else?

[CoolChris]

The mobo can over clock brilliantly. I can go to 2.6ghz on stock cooling on the chip without major difficulties, but I think that the Celeron is holding it back. I only have 2 options...266mhz and auto...well really only 1 option...the 266mhz.... as auto will default to this anyway methinks. This board has options to go in percentage oc increment like 10%, 20%, 30% etc..this is programmed into the bios. I can also overclock manually, but still have only the 266mhz option. I believe that when I get the prescott it will give me the full options of upto 800 FSB. Looks like the prescott will be sooner rather than later, especially at the prices they are at now.
Thanks for the reply by the way.

[keithwalton]

yep sounds like the 400fsb of the celeron is holding it back (100mhz real terms) as running the ram at 266 (133 real) is already async by 3:4 (fsb:memory) your board will have a few of these ratios but they are mostly there to slow the ram down rather than speed it up. such as 5:4, 4:3 and 3:2 dividers. This is because of the p4's high fsb would require ddr400 to be in sync. so they've built in these options so you can run ddr333, 266 etc. It's a bonus that you can slow down your ram whilst overclocking as well.
As on the release of the P4 'C' (800fsb) ddr 400 was about as fast as it got. When i got mine a few weeks after launch i got some ddr433 crucial chips but with such a large overclock i use a 5:4 diveder just to get the ram back down to ddr433 :-)

K

[sin0822]

hes right ^^^^. In simple terms ram only goes as fast as the proccessor will take it. For instance i have pc4000 ram, so the speed is really 250, and the p4 3.2 pressy is 200, the ram will only go 200 until i move the fsb up.