Xeons and RAM

[dreamchaser]

Hi,

I am a designer and not much of a geek, so please excuse me if my questions are a bit naive.

I just purchased a workstation from Dell (Precision 650) with dual 3.06 Xeons (I'm an animator). I plan to buy my own RAM and HD's because I save a bit of money by doing this instead of having Dell put them in. One thing I noticed is that they only include DDR266 RAM with their Xeons, but they combine regular Pentium 4s with DDR333s or DDR400s. Is this a Dell peculiarity or are Xeons only able to work with the slower RAM?

Thanks.

 

[TheGoatMan]

Thats a tough one because I have no idea if the xeons work differently or if dell is cheap. From what I've seen you have to you use 266 if your motherboard won't support higher. Check your board specs and it will tell you.

 

[viol8ion]

The 650 probably only has a 533 FSB and 266 RAM. It should still scream with the dual Xeons compared to faster, single proc machines.

When in doubt, deny all terms and defnitions.

http://www.wuli.com

 

[skiflyer]

I'd call dell and get both an answer and a reason from them. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm fairly sure it would be up to the mother board, and while I don't know if Xeon's do 333 RAM, they do do dual channel ram for faster bandwidth (or maybe dual channel is 333? Sorry I'm out of touch on the RAM technologies). You can go to

http://www.hp.com

and look at the XW8000 for an example if you'd like...

Anyway, Dell's supposed to have good customer support, especially for their workstations... just make sure to press them on the why, otherwise you might just get someone who doesn't want to be on the phone right then.

-Rob

 

[dreamchaser]

Thanks. The issue is resolved. Xeon's only use 266. Thanks and Merry Christmas!