Fastest socket A mb and memory

jwt

Quick question

Looking for the fastest socket A motherboard available that offers IDE RAIDand built in sound.

To match the motherboard recommendations for fast reliable memory.

Would a singlr 512Mb be better than 2 256Mb sticks?

Thanks


JWT

MadKevo

There's a roundup of three new nVidia nForce2 chipset-based mobos at Tom's Hardware.

Note support for Dual Memory Channel which may answer the question of "one stick or two?".

Link to roundup on Tom's Hardware

HTH,
/MK

mackanz

jwt,

If you where to buy a socket a today and also use it for overclock, Abit KX7 Raid is the fastest/coolest/most stable board around. The new KT 400 versions are a bit faster at the same fsb, yes, but that is because of more agressive timings and there is not so many memory sticks out there that can take advantage of it fully.

Overall, Abit is a very safe bet if you want speed and tweakability to the max. I have tested 4 different KT 333 boards and no one comes even close to what the Abit can give.

As for the memory sticks, a single 512 is much better if you want to overclock since it is very hard to find 2 IDENTICAL sticks and use them next to each other and you also gain latency on the memory bus by having 2 sticks instead of one. Also, if you can, try to fund a singlesided stick instead of doublesided, that gains some as well.

As far as memory is concerned, Mushkin is a very safe bet, they are much cheaper than Corsair and OCZ (you wouldn´t buy them i hope) and of the 6 sticks of Mushkin i have tried, ALL of them have done what Mushkin have promised. I cant really say that this is the case with Corsair, 3 out of 8 have done what they say on the tin.

Good luck!

Mac

jwt

OK had a look around and am going to go for the abit KX7 raid

Komplett have them in stock.

Next question is memory ......
They stock pc2700 crucial cl2.5 and generic pc3200 cl2.5

Would pc3200 cl2.5 running at 333 as opposed to 400 be capable of handling more aggressive memory timings than pc2700 cl2.5 and while we are at it whats the story with twinmos memory...any good?

komplett memory

mackanz

Twinmos is suppose to be really good, but unfortunatley you cant see the ns ratings on the sticks chips. The 3200 should have a rating of 5ns and if it is that, you should have a very nice setup.

The corsairs and the OCZ for example, they cherry picks or hand-picks memory sticks from them and put their own heatspreaders on it to have it look shiny. Now, that heatspreader dont do a squat to be honest. Go to maplins and buy a thermaltake heatspreader for memory and video cards and use that.

The 3200 Twinmos is the one to use. Not the 2700 crucial.

Mac

Hold on!!

Before you order the motherboard, get the one WITH raid.

jwt

RAID all the way

So you reckon the twinMos 3200 cl2.5 is the way to go???

JWT

BabyEater

That Twinmos RAM has a 5ns rating There is a review of it here http://www.overclockers.com.au/article.php?id=109742

mackanz

The Twinmos 3200 has the Winbond 5ns rated chips and thats the stuff,m8. Cant get good memory cheaper than that at the moment.

Mac