Memory divider ???????

[audibal]

Okay big ol' nOOb here..

Can someone tell me what the memory divider is, how it works, and why I should use it?

I see mention of it in the forum, and have noticed it in the bios, but just don't understand what it's for?

Only other thing is can anyone tell me the importance of voltage increases when oc'ing my processor?

[Avid6eek]

Audibal....Welcome to the PCStats Forums!

Memory Divider - One popular way of overclocking your processor is to increase your FSB. This increases the processor bus, and memory bus equally. In the event that your processor still has the ability to increase in speed, but your memory is maxed out, you would use the memory divider to slow down your memory. Example: You want to run your FSB at 200Mhz, but your memory maxes at 100Mhz. Set the FSB to 200Mhz, and the memory devider to 1/2, and the memory will run at 100Mhz. That was an extremely basic example, but it should give you an idea of what it is for.

Voltage - This is basically the amount of power supplied to the processor. If you want the processor to run faster, you need to give it more power! The side affect is that pumping more power through the processor also causes it to run hotter. This is why cooling is so important when overclocking. It's okay to put more power through a processor, as long as you can get rid of the extra heat it creates.

I hope that answers your two questions. If it doesn't, just say so and I, or someone else, will go into more detail :)

[audibal]

Thanks much Shiz. This actually helps quite abit.:)

If anyone else has more info I would really love it. I really want to understand.

[c0ldweller]

Just in case you didn't know, you don't need to increase the CPU voltage right away. See how far you can go with it before it stops working correctly (i.e. blue screen of death, random crashes, etc.), then you can try upping the voltage. And you can also up the memory voltage so you don't have to use a mem divider right away.

[Avid6eek]

Thanks much Shiz. This actually helps quite abit.:)

If anyone else has more info I would really love it. I really want to understand. If there is more you want to know, just ask. Also, if you have question related to a specific piece of hardware, feel free to ask it in the other parts of the forum. Your more likely to get a more detailed answer there. Most of the real computer nerds :cool: tend to hang out in the General Hardware / Motherboards / CPU / Video Card / Overclocking sections. Your not the only one with these types of questions. The answers you get can also help others who have the same questions and just didn't ask.

[lazyrunner50]

..One more thing to add to Shiznit's response...Increasing the voltage has the effect of stabilizing the processor because the faster information goes through the circuits, the easier it is for the information to degrade. The downside is as Shiz said is extra heat.

When you are overclocking your system, all devices are being stressed. This is why it is sometimes necessary to not only add voltage to the processor but also to the other things like memory and the chipset. Usually the only ones you have to worry about are the memory and processor voltage. Even then it is only necessary to bump them up 0.1 volts or so.

If you are really wanting to get into overclocking, I suggest you get a copy of memtest86 and Prime95. I'm not sure where you can download them, but they are freeware and all over the net. After you finish overclocking run both of these for a couple hours each, and if they both pass, you should have a system that can run 24 hours a day at those speeds with no problems.

[ninjagaiden05]

I want to make some more questions to further understand this:

If divider is: 4/5 could it mean: processor is 9*250 and memory is: 200mhz
If divider is: 4/6 could it mean: processor is 9*300 and memory is: 200mhz
If divider is: 5/6 could it mean: processor is 9*300 and memory is: 200mhz
Does the dividers have anything to do with locked/unlocked cpu, type of cpu and the multiplier of the cpu?

The memory I'm going to buy is pc3200 but according to seller he managed to OC it to 250mhz with stock voltage, now is there a risk of overheating or unstability since this would be overclocked.

[chris000001]

I want to make some more questions to further understand this:

If divider is: 4/5 could it mean: processor is 9*250 and memory is: 200mhz
If divider is: 4/6 could it mean: processor is 9*300 and memory is: 200mhz
If divider is: 5/6 could it mean: processor is 9*300 and memory is: 200mhz
Does the dividers have anything to do with locked/unlocked cpu, type of cpu and the multiplier of the cpu?

The memory I'm going to buy is pc3200 but according to seller he managed to OC it to 250mhz with stock voltage, now is there a risk of overheating or unstability since this would be overclocked.


Maybe this will help you understand a little more

http://forum.pcstats.com/showpost.php?p=295209&postcount=1

dividers have nothing to do with cpu being locked or unlocked, the multiplyer is a set value on the CPU and then is multiplyed by the FSB to get the frequency, the only multipler unlocked cpus on the market are the intel Extreme edition and the AMD FX's, back in the day of the Athlon-XP (pre A64) there were some unlocked CPU's and tricks you could do to unlock them, and then there where the moble athlon-xp's which i beleive had an unlocked multi. currently all athlon 64's have the multi unlocked downwards, meaning you can lower it but you cant raise it passed its factory settings.

if you happen to have an FX processor, when over clocking you can increase the multi, instead of the FSB so that way you wont have to run on a divider

When overcl****ing there is always a risk of instability, for the seller to have that ram running that high of an FSB with stock voltages he had to have had horrible timings, if you plan to OC that ram to those specs i would suggest adding a little more voltage to then so you can run them at lower timings, since timings have a much larger effect on the A64 than bandwidth does.

as for overheating, you want to make sure you have plenty of air moving throughout your case to keep heat from building up