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Santa Rosa - what's the RAM clockspeed?

M

mustgroove

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 14, 2006
203
12
The FSB speed of the new Santa Rosa is 800mhz, but it's no longer the case that RAM necessarily operates synchronously with the FSB, and in the absence of any info on the subject, I'm definitely wondering...

So is the RAM speed 667mhz or 800mhz? Anybody know?
 
I would think the 667mhz ram would stay standard for some time.
EDIT: It didn't say anything about this in the Wikipedia article about Santa Rosa platform.
 
mustgroove said:
The FSB speed of the new Santa Rosa is 800mhz, but it's no longer the case that RAM necessarily operates synchronously with the FSB, and in the absence of any info on the subject, I'm definitely wondering...

So is the RAM speed 667mhz or 800mhz? Anybody know?
Click to expand...

AFAIK it should be both (either or). There is some Geil memory that is already 800mhz DDR2. It has a pretty freaking low latency as well. Here is the page. Along with the 800 they have 1066 and 1160. Oddly enough it seems like getting the memory in SODIMM FF is not hard, but questionable. It may take a month or two longer for everyone to announce the faster notebook memory.
 
For a while now, Dell has offered both 533 MHz and 667 MHz RAM on their latest models, so with Santa Rosa I can see them bumping up the low end to 667 MHz and offering the faster 800 MHz as an upgrade.

Apple has always been on the faster side with RAM so maybe they'll jump right up to 800 MHz? It'd be nice to have RAM running at the same FSB speed as the CPU (assuming the chipset can support it).
 
ajhaji said:
For a while now, Dell has offered both 533 MHz and 667 MHz RAM on their latest models, so with Santa Rosa I can see them bumping up the low end to 667 MHz and offering the faster 800 MHz as an upgrade.

Apple has always been on the faster side with RAM so maybe they'll jump right up to 800 MHz? It'd be nice to have RAM running at the same FSB speed as the CPU (assuming the chipset can support it).
Click to expand...

Who does Apple normally go with for memory? Hynix? Kingston has DDR2-800 but it is 117 for a 1 gb stick.
 
No manufacturer AFAIK is offering 800 MHz DDR2 SODIMMs.
800 (and for $$$$, higher) is offered in fullsize DIMMs but there is a huge issue. 99% of higher-than-667 DIMMs require the memory buss voltage to be cranked from 1.8V to 2.0 to 2.2V. Otherwise at 1.8V the module performs at 667 CL5.

That is just never going to happen in a notebook machine, because the heat and battery drain would be prohibitive.

The reason is that there are very few native 800 MHz chips being produced yet. Most 800 MHz modules are built with 667 chips that then have to be overclocked, which requires more voltage.

Apple uses Hynix, Samsung, Micron, Elpida and others depending on their supply contracts. They never use Kingston or Crucial.
 
CanadaRAM said:
No manufacturer AFAIK is offering 800 MHz DDR2 SODIMMs.
800 (and for $$$$, higher) is offered in fullsize DIMMs but there is a huge issue. 99% of higher-than-667 DIMMs require the memory buss voltage to be cranked from 1.8V to 2.0 to 2.2V. Otherwise at 1.8V the module performs at 667 CL5.

That is just never going to happen in a notebook machine, because the heat and battery drain would be prohibitive.

The reason is that there are very few native 800 MHz chips being produced yet. Most 800 MHz modules are built with 667 chips that then have to be overclocked, which requires more voltage.

Apple uses Hynix, Samsung, Micron, Elpida and others depending on their supply contracts. They never use Kingston or Crucial.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that clarification. Hopefully soon we'll see an advancement that will
overcome this issue.
 
CanadaRAM said:
No manufacturer AFAIK is offering 800 MHz DDR2 SODIMMs.
800 (and for $$$$, higher) is offered in fullsize DIMMs but there is a huge issue. 99% of higher-than-667 DIMMs require the memory buss voltage to be cranked from 1.8V to 2.0 to 2.2V. Otherwise at 1.8V the module performs at 667 CL5.

That is just never going to happen in a notebook machine, because the heat and battery drain would be prohibitive.

The reason is that there are very few native 800 MHz chips being produced yet. Most 800 MHz modules are built with 667 chips that then have to be overclocked, which requires more voltage.

Apple uses Hynix, Samsung, Micron, Elpida and others depending on their supply contracts. They never use Kingston or Crucial.
Click to expand...

Kingston doesn't agree with you. Neither does Hynix, S5 is DDR2-800. Didn't look for the others, but I am pretty sure they have sodimms modules as well.

But the other person is right Intel only supports 533/667 in the PM965 Chipset.

Intel PM965 PDF said:
System Memory Support
• Supports dual channel DDR2 SDRAM
• One SO-DIMM connector (or memory module) per channel
• Two Memory Channel Configurations supported
— Dual channel interleaved
— Dual channel Asymmetric
• Maximum memory supported: 4 GB
• Intel® Flex Memory Technology support
• 64-bit wide per channel
• Support for DDR2 at 667 MHz and 533 MHz
• 256-Mb, 512-Mb, and 1-Gb memory technologies supported
• Support for x8 and x16 devices
• Support for DDR2 On-Die Termination (ODT)
• Supports partial writes to memory using data mask signals (DM)
• Dynamic rank power-down
• No support for Fast Chip Select mode
• No support for ECC
Click to expand...
That crushes hope for more than 4 GB of ram as well.
 
Santa Rosa by Intel. Crushing your hopes and dreams since May 9, 2007.

In the official santa rosa thread I mentioned a PC Magazine review of a Santa Rosa HP laptop that says that it supports 8 gigabytes of RAM. But then someone went to the HP website and it says max 4 gigs of RAM. Oh well.
 
diamond.g said:
Kingston doesn't agree with you. Neither does Hynix, S5 is DDR2-800. Didn't look for the others, but I am pretty sure they have sodimms modules as well.
Click to expand...

Yes, I stand corrected, Kingston and Hynix have released 800 MHz SODIMMs. They are not yet in stock at the major Canadian wholesalers, with no ETA. Kingston does not have stock on the 800 MHz SODIMMs for the next 1 - 2 weeks. So Announced = Yes, Available = Not quite yet.
Crucial has not introduced 800 MHz SODIMMs yet.

The shortage of native 800 MHz components will keep them scarce for the next short while until the supplies ramp up. The lack of machines that will actually support 800 Mhz will hold up volume supplies for a while too.
 
CanadaRAM said:
Yes, I stand corrected, Kingston and Hynix have released 800 MHz SODIMMs. They are not yet in stock at the major Canadian wholesalers, with no ETA. Kingston does not have stock on the 800 MHz SODIMMs for the next 1 - 2 weeks. So Announced = Yes, Available = Not quite yet.
Crucial has not introduced 800 MHz SODIMMs yet.

The shortage of native 800 MHz components will keep them scarce for the next short while until the supplies ramp up. The lack of machines that will actually support 800 Mhz will hold up volume supplies for a while too.
Click to expand...
I don't doubt that. Of course we will see how fast Intel steps up to 800mhz memory support.
 
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