Ram Speed question

[Joe]

I have just put together a new system AM2 X2 3800 on an Asus M2NPV-VM mb. I
ordered two stickes of Corsair DDR2 667 ram which acording to corsair was
suitable for this board. Well this computer will just flat out not run with
both sticks of ram in it and them set to 667 speed. It will not even get
booted.It will work with one stick of Ram at 667. In trouble shooting this I
decided to try the ram at 533. Well the computer will run and is rock solid
with both sticks of RAM in it when it is set to 533 instead of 667 where the
ram is supposed to be.
So my question, How much performance am I really loosing by running the
Ram at 533 as aposed to 667 after all the X2 3800 is also available in the
939 soket in which ccase it would only be running DDR400 RAM. Are we talking
1 or 2 percent here or 10 or 20 percent because if we are only talking a
few percent here I am not going to go to the trouble of returning the RAM
but if we are talking significat diference I will swap the RAM

Joe

 

[Paul]

I have just put together a new system AM2 X2 3800 on an Asus M2NPV-VM mb. I
ordered two stickes of Corsair DDR2 667 ram which acording to corsair was
suitable for this board. Well this computer will just flat out not run with
both sticks of ram in it and them set to 667 speed. It will not even get
booted.It will work with one stick of Ram at 667. In trouble shooting this I
decided to try the ram at 533. Well the computer will run and is rock solid
with both sticks of RAM in it when it is set to 533 instead of 667 where the
ram is supposed to be.
So my question, How much performance am I really loosing by running the
Ram at 533 as aposed to 667 after all the X2 3800 is also available in the
939 soket in which ccase it would only be running DDR400 RAM. Are we talking
1 or 2 percent here or 10 or 20 percent because if we are only talking a
few percent here I am not going to go to the trouble of returning the RAM
but if we are talking significat diference I will swap the RAM

Joe

You are not alone. I found another user with the same problem.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...rd_id=1&model=M2NPV-VM&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

In this chart, Tomshardware tries DDR2-600 and DDR2-800. You
can see the Photoshop results don't change too much in the lower
chart. But the results for games seem to be impacted a bit more.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/23/amd_reinvents_itself/page37.html

Once a better BIOS comes out for your board, you'll get to run it
at DDR2-667. Give it time.

What I'm curious about right now, is if _any_ boards have good
handling of DDR2. Surely one of the BIOSes out there somewhere,
got this right.

Paul