Ram Speed????

[Silverdot1211]

Ok a little new and a little noobish...... I have a slightly aging computer and I just bought some memory to keep the old thing kick'n and I guess I am a little confused. I put 3 gigs of DDR 400 and when I run CPU-Z is says the DRAM Freq is 200mHz is this right is it running at 200 or am I missing a multiplier somewhere?
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Joe/Desktop/cpuz.htm

 

[wol-va-rine]

Ok a little new and a little noobish...... I have a slightly aging computer and I just bought some memory to keep the old thing kick'n and I guess I am a little confused. I put 3 gigs of DDR 400 and when I run CPU-Z is says the DRAM Freq is 200mHz is this right is it running at 200 or am I missing a multiplier somewhere?
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Joe/Desktop/cpuz.htm

it's DDR (double data rate), 200mhz double pumped is 400mhz...

 

[JogaBonito1502]

It is right. The RAM is most likely being bottlenecked by your processor. I'm going to go ahead and assume your processor has a 400MHz FSB (if quad-pumped). Before I explain it to you, I want to get it clear that DDR = Double Data Rate.

Ok, a quad-pumped processor is a processor that access the memory 4 times per cycle. So if it has a 400MHz FSB it would divide that into 4 to equally access the memory each pump during the cycle using 100MHz. Because DDR memory does 2 cycles for every cycle at the given speed it doesn't have to equally split the speed up to suffice for every pump. However you still need to take care of the 2 remaining pumps, so speed is cut in half to suffice for all 4 pumps. Therefore if you bought 400MHz RAM, at optimum level it could take care of 200MHz pumps. But because your processor only does 100MHz pumps, only half of that speed is utilized, and thus the principle of bottlenecking.

edit: Oh I guess I miss-read your question, your processor then is 800MHz, and the RAM is being utilized to its limit.

 

[Silverdot1211]

My system specs are Athlon64 3000+ 2 GHz, 3 gigs of g.skill ddr400, 6600gt, 120gig HD, and a Gigabyte k8 motherboard.....nothing special but it works and I am just trying to save a few bucks for a little while longer

 

[JogaBonito1502]

With Athlons you shouldn't have the CPU bottleneck as much. Maybe once your RAM is like half of the HT I think, I'm not sure. AMDs, not with me, although I have an AMD avatar.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Just to reiterate, your memory is running at the proper speed as wol-va-rine pointed out. DDR400 RAM runs on a 200MHz FSB.

3GB should be plenty for that ol' rig.