Building system for Uncle - not familiar with 1333 FSB

[jpinard]

I have a few questions hopefully someone can asnwer. MY Uncle was having trouble with his DVD drives and media card slots and - took it to Staples for an upgrade to Vista hoping it'd solve his hardware problems... it didn't (Sony Vaio). So I convinced him to not upgrade that system anymore and go with new equipment.

My system is a dual core 6600 I OC'ed from 2.4 to 3.2 Gig. I wanted to do somethignsimilar for him but with less stress on the cpu/mem (he lives 300 miles away). The E8400 looked perfect and I told him how cheap memory was (mine was $55 for 2 Gig)... but now I feel stupid because I didn't realize the cpu has a different FSB than my processor. My questions:

* Is the FSB clock rate indepednatn so you can use 800 MHZ memory with a processor that has 1333 FSB like the E8400?

* What memory would you suggest for this application? I was going to lightly overclock his processor to 3.1 or 3.2 GHz to match my own.

* The Asus P5N-E seemed like a good mobo choice (price/performance). Is that still OK? I suggested he go SLI so his next upgrade will be simply popping in a second video card. I have an A-Bit AB9 Quad GT which I LOVE. I would have suggested he go with that, but sadly it's not NVidia SLI.

[Case]

* Is the FSB clock rate indepednatn so you can use 800 MHZ memory with a processor that has 1333 FSB like the E8400?

The FSB of a CPU is independent of the memory clock served by the memory controller (north bridge). So there's no problem with compatibility. The best performanc tends to be when memory clock and FSB are in sync, but it's not a big deal.

* What memory would you suggest for this application? I was going to lightly overclock his processor to 3.1 or 3.2 GHz to match my own.

I dunno, there's no point. It's already running at 3GHz; the performance increase you'll see is microscopic. If you do this, however, you should get DDR2 rated at 1066, so you can increase memory clock, too. But even that's not necessary. Most BIOSes in higher end boards let you run the memory completely out of sync with the FSB.

* The Asus P5N-E seemed like a good mobo choice (price/performance). Is that still OK? I suggested he go SLI so his next upgrade will be simply popping in a second video card. I have an A-Bit AB9 Quad GT which I LOVE. I would have suggested he go with that, but sadly it's not NVidia SLI.

I just built a system for a friend with a P5N-E. It seems to be a sweet board.

[jpinard]

One more question. It seems 1333 MHZ is mainly offered in DDR3 format. Can that mobo take DDR3? I know the pin design is the same, but in the past new memory meant different mobo.

[stusser]

Don't overclock your uncle's computer unless you plan on supporting it too. In fact, don't build one at all. You're begging for pain. Tell him to buy a dell.

[Case]

No, the P5N-E uses DDR2. DDR2-800 runs just fine in it. Remember, the FSB clock does not have to be coupled to the memory clock.

One more question. It seems 1333 MHZ is mainly offered in DDR3 format. Can that mobo take DDR3? I know the pin design is the same, but in the past new memory meant different mobo.