Will these two work together?

[jake_larkee]

ok I have a phenom II 965 BE laying around and some 1600MHz ram. Will they work together? yes my mobo is rated for 1600.

 

[Wamphryi]

It should work but it is possible that the Motherboard may need a BIOS upgrade.

 

[jake_larkee]

Yeah i thought so, i was reading some dumb website and it was saying that cpu could only handle 1333 speed.

 

[Wamphryi]

The website is probably right in that regard. The CPU will cause a 1333 MHZ bottleneck but the important thing to remember is that means very little in terms of real world performance. While RAM is offering more bandwidth these days it changes very little. The one area that having more bandwidth in RAM that matters is overclocking. For instance to overclock an i5 Sandy Bridge K series CPU you will need 1600 MHZ RAM. If you are running stock specifications then there is no advantage having 1600 MHZ RAM over 1333 MHZ RAM.

 

[jake_larkee]

The website is probably right in that regard. The CPU will cause a 1333 MHZ bottleneck but the important thing to remember is that means very little in terms of real world performance. While RAM is offering more bandwidth these days it changes very little. The one area that having more bandwidth in RAM that matters is overclocking. For instance to overclock an i5 Sandy Bridge K series CPU you will need 1600 MHZ RAM. If you are running stock specifications then there is no advantage having 1600 MHZ RAM over 1333 MHZ RAM.

Ok, so lets say i plan to oc. is this going to be an issue?

 

[Wamphryi]

In terms of the RAM I would think not. After all it is the 1600 MHZ RAM that is required for overclocking but there may well be limitations as far as your motherboard and or CPU go. That will require further investigation.

 

[jake_larkee]

Best answer selected by jake_larkee.