I've got a Gigabyte GA-7VA with a Pally 2000, just about to upgrade to a thoroughbred 2600 (333fsb). However, currently I have no name PC2100 RAM - is the system likely to run at 333 fsb, or will a RAM upgrade also be necessary? I was going to get a stick of Samsung PC2700 as I will be running the fsb and ram synch'd.

Cheers

yes

2700 is 333 memory.....consider if you are going to overclock........if so/3200..........you should also be able to dial in cas 2.......even if you get 2.5 with a samsung module......not a certainty.......but a possibilty

I'd say go with the samsung PC 2700 (as long as your mobo supoprts it)...

It should give you bette results than what you would see with the PC2100...

You can always test the system with the PC2100 ram and see if that will run 333Mhz. I recently sold some cheap generic ram to someone and they put a heatspreader on it and are running it at PC2700/333Mhz without any problems. You can always get the ram later, unless your worried about the individual delivery costs

u always want ur ram to be the same speed or faster than ur FSB - if it isnt then the chip is waiting idle for information from that ram = wasted clock cycles.
i would recommend Corsair TwinX DDR2700 CAS 2 RAM - very very fast

Steg

p.s - make sure u get the Low Latency version - my standard ram (Corsair DDR2700 CAS 2 RAM) will create game errors and spontanious reboots in NWN and other games when running at (6-2-2-T2)