DDR400 vs DDR500?

[Seany1212]

Ok, ram is not one of my specialities in computing and im going to seem like a right noob now and say, my mobo is the A8N-SLI SE, now i cant have the DDR500 ram in can i without limiting its bandwidth speed, and also is there some motherboard that supports this speed as i havent really seen any, i only thought that DDR500 was an overclocked DDR400 running stable, and was somehow different from DDR333 and such. Teach a ram-noob about ram? :roll:

[DanTheBanjoman]

DDR is a standard, officially going up to 400MHz, DDR 500 indeed is DDR400 guaranteed to work at 500MHz. Officially no board supports this speed since it isn't an official standard. However when you overclock past 400MHz it could help you out a lot. Of course it'll work in any DDR board at speeds supported by the board. (DDR500 could run as DDR333 as well)

[mandelore]

you can use a divider to up your ram also, not just reduce its frequency. some ddr 500's are overclocked or "specially picked" ddr400s that can happily run at those speeds. My ram, bleedin expensive at the time is a cherry picked ddr400 module that can happily run at 600mhz, 550 by default. others may just be set at 500mhz, designed that way. my mobo dont have official support for ddr550, but it supports it never the less, i just use a 216 divider on my bios to reach 600mhz + speeds

[Seany1212]

So if i brought these OCZ sticks of DDR500 (at bottom) as an example would the speed be reduced by my motherboard to 400mhz or would it remain at 500mhz as if it was overclocked?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/OCZ-Platinum-PC4000-2GB-2X1GB-DDR500-CL3-3-2-8-184pin_W0QQitemZ220118578576QQihZ012QQcategoryZ172 QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[mandelore]

no it wouldnt be reduced, a combination of cpu speed and a right divider will net you your desired, or even greater ram speed

[Seany1212]

Cool cheers guys, ram-noob is updated :roll:

[mandelore]

hehe, you dont get away that fast, you gotta update us with how it goes!! :D

[bigboi86]

By default it will only run at 400mhz when you install the RAM. You have to go into the BIOS and either run a divider to make it faster than the FSB, or run the FSB at 250mhz(this will OC the CPU too),which will make the ram run DDR500.

So when you pop the ram in for the first time, you'll see it as DDR400.