Hi,

I was thinking of getting a new motherboard and processor.The new processor is gonna be 333fsb 2500xp amd baron .But i dont want to buy all new ram.Can I use my ddr2100 266fsb ramn with a 333fsb processor and not have any problems or reduced processor speed?

Thanks!!!

the ram and CPU operate on different FSB (266 for the ram and 333 for the cpu) so you would have problems and have to under clock the CPU to 266 FSB or overclock your ram to 333 FSB, I would recommend buying some PC2700 (333) stuff and selling your PC2100, you would only loose a max of £15 if you sold it on ebay / ebid

also don't buy cheep generic stuff go for some branded IMO, with crucial you get a lifetime warrantee and good prices

If PC2100 all works with 333FSB, there wont be any need to make and PC2700 ram at all, the FSB is the key to sync the CPU and the board, using lower rated may work, but you are simply yaking the chance, I do know with high quality memory they can work, but XP can be very fussy about these timing, so even if you can get it to , sooner or later, it may just die without warning.
Now, imagine you were doing something important on your PC, ie, a huge graphics design that took you days, suddently your XP just give you a blue screen of death, nevermind losing your work, you may also need to reinstall XP and all software again, is it worth it ? you are the one with the answers :)

For what its worth, I tried it once with XP2600 and PC2100 RAM, it worked for about 45 mins, then Windows 2000 just died, and the only way out were to reset the BIOS, and this is using Crucial memory which had worked perfectly on a XP1800 for a year.

Originally posted by duffy90210
Now, imagine you were doing something important on your PC, ie, a huge graphics design that took you days, suddently your XP just give you a blue screen of death,

beat you too it m8

and xp dosent have the bluescreen of death it just locks up ;)

Dave, as I dont use XP, my imagination had to take over on that part :)

So this is MS's solution to remedy the BSOF ? ;)

actually...it either locks up..or just resets itself. i would rather have the bsod instead of xp restarting out of no where...then at least i would know what happened.

Yes you can use 266 ram with a 333 CPU but your CPU will only run at 266 so it be underclocked.

Check your bios to see if you are able to set the memory speed seperately or if there is a memory specific divider.

My motherboard has a memory divider which works both ways. I have an xp2200 which is 266 FSB but PC2700 which is 333 (FSB + 1/4 FSB).

May be worth a look.

Andy, did you noticed any increase in performance ? I tried this on a K7S6A XP1800 with 512MB of PC2700 set at 166, but Sandra came back with the same result as when using PC2100, and overall, I noticed little or no improvement at all.

Duffy

I haven't tried it at any other speeds duffy. I got the pc2700 along with the cpu and motherboard at the same time. I just set it up, set the fsb for the CPU and it auto detected the memory and set it up accordingly (although I've fine tuned the memory settings I've never had to change the speed).

So I've never ran pc2100 in my system or ran the pc2700 at pc2100 speeds.

From what I can tell though (after reading websites and such), the difference between pc2100 and pc2700 isn't really all that much.

Originally posted by Oddjob633
actually...it either locks up..or just resets itself. i would rather have the bsod instead of xp restarting out of no where...then at least i would know what happened.

you need to disable automatic reboot after error in Sys properties,then you'll see BSOD.

also log files of errors are in event viewer in your administrative tools