Hi, I'm putting together a system and I was planning on buying a CPU/Motherboard combo to make my life a little easier. Well I was looking at an Althon 2700 XP with a ASUS A7V8X-RLSF VIA KT400 motherboard, but it only comes with 256mb PC3200 so I would need to add to that or upgrade. In the motherboard description it says:

DDR400 (PC3200), the latest and fastest DDR memory standard, supports bandwidth up to 3.2GB/s to provide enhanced system performance. (Note: PC3200 Max. to 2 banks only; PC2700 Max. to 4 banks only)

What in the world does that mean?

Thankx

256 MB is probably enough if you are running anything but WinXP. If you are doing photoediting or big graphics, you might need 512 MB or even 1 GB.

PC 3200 = DDR400. 400 MHz DDR is the fastest memory bus speed for the A7V8X motherboard. You can only have two DDR400 memory modules in your system. Only two banks can be used out of the four available. But you can use any size module (256,512,1GB) in each slot.

PC 2700 = DDR333. The Athlon 2700+ CPU has a clock speed of 166 MHz. And the A7V8X allows a FSB (front side bus) speed of 166 MHz. Double data rate memory will run at 333 MHz on this bus (166x2=333). This is the type of memory you want anyway. It is much better performance-wise for memory to rum synchronously (at the same speed) with the CPU/FSB. PC3200 can be clocked at 333 MHz in order to run synchronously. No performance can be gained by clocking the memory at 400MHz unless your FSB is also clocked at that speed.

You can have 4 PC2700 memory modules on this MB. If you have two PC3200's and two PC2700's, they must all run at 333 MHz.

So I really wouldn't see a performance difference between the DDR 400 and the DDR 333 motherboards?

Are banks the same as DIMMs because the description of the motherboard says there are 4 banks, but only 3 DIMMs?

Is there a difference between the generic and the name brand memory?
If so, what brand name should I look for?

Thanks, everyone's so helpful here.

Some boards are picky about memory and I believe Asus is one of them. You can check their website to see what the recommend. Crucial is one of the companies that people recommend a lot here and they have a compatibility tool on their web site.

I don't know what the deal is with banks and DIMMS. I would think they are the same and maybe it is a misprint.

Running 3 Asus boards with generic RAM and nary a problem.

Banks are the sections of circuitries on your mobo including the sockets to which the DIMM's are attached/inserted.
but only 3 DIMMs?Is it being shipped with 3 sticks of memory?

The VIA KT400 chipset was slightly flawed and offered no performance gain over the KT333 - maybe was slightly worse.

But boards with the KT400 did offer AGP 8X, firewire support and USB 2.0.

Crucial's website explained it this way
"When using DDR400 (PC3200) the system supports a maximum of 2 banks of memory, when using DDR333 (PC2700) the system supports a maximum of 4 banks of memory. A single DIMM will either have 1 or 2 banks of memory."
So, I guess banks and DIMMs are two different things.

By that description it seems that it is whether the RAM is single or double sided.