Whats the downside of having the DRAM frequency lower than the stock?

[ziggie216]

System specs
E6420

 

[irkjab]

How much lower?

For a small decrease I doubt you'll see any effect on performance.
I was running my ddr2-800 ram at 750mhz for a while, it did not have any negative effect.

 

[jsc]

Let's see if we are talking about the same thing ...

Let's say you have a Q6600 (266 MHz FSB times 9 internal mult = 2.4 GHz core speed). Quad pumped bus means that you are going to transfer 4 chunks of data each bus cycle (that's where the 1066 MHz comes from).

At stock speed, you need ddr2- 533 (266 MHz. times 2 - it transfers data on both the leading edge and trailing edge of each FSB clock cycle) RAM to run 1:1 with the FSB.

And you bought DDR2-800 memory. Is that what you are asking?

If so, no downside. It just won't run as fast as it can. In fact, you could tighten memory timings if you wanted to. In many motherboards, you could set the RAM to run faster than the CPU. Not sure what it would get you.