Thread: Motherboards & Ram

The choice of memory doesn't really affect the choice of processor but it does affect the choice of motherboard. All Intel chipset motherboards (P35, X38, G33 etc) have a certain fixed number of ratio options between the frequency of the FSB and memory which has to be maintained. These ratios are like 1.5 : 1, 2.0 : 1 and so on and are called Memory Divider Ratios. The biggest prob¬lem Intel chipset based boards have is the memory divider ratio-simply because overclock¬ingyour FSB means automatically increasing the memory clock as well. We call this a problem because most of us are running on value memory-which doesn't overclock well.

In case your PC is running value memory on an Intel chipset based board you may well be limiting your overclocking potential. NVIDIAs 6xx family of chipsets have a very different approach to overclocking memory and FSB-there's no relation, as they've unlinked each component-no memory dividers plaguing overclocks anymore as the memory frequency and FSB frequency is totally asynchronous.

The choice is simple-if you want to overclock higher with cheaper memory-go for an NVIDIA 680i/650i chipset based motherboard. If you have high quality DDR2 memory and are looking to overclock memory as well then you can go with either Intel or NVIDIA chipset-based boards.

Your choices are limited for enthusiast grade memory, unless you can buy it online or have a relative bring it over from the States or Europe. Corsair does have certain high performance kits available locally-their XMS 2 series are basically high frequency, low latency kits-DDR2 800 MHz will cost you nearly triple the price of a regular 2 GB 667 MHz kit.