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How far can you overclock Winbond's CH-5 chips ?

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Bugeyes

Member
Joined
Oct 14, 2002
Location
Australia
I'm thinking of getting some Buffalo PC3200 2 x 512 sticks with Windbond CH-5 chips, It's the right price, but I dont know much about this ram!
I will be running it in a NF7-S with a Barton 2500+, My Barton is only good to about 2300MHz, 11 x 210MHz, But It will usually be run at 2200Mhz, 11 x 200!
So what can I expect from this ram in regards to it's overclocking potential and timings ?
 
Ideally, you can hope for 200MHz w/ 2-3-2 timings. Hopefully, you can hope for 210Mhz w/ 2-3-2 timings. You may have to drop timings to 2-3-3 to get past 200Mhz. This is assuming you have less then 2.85V to put into the sticks. If you have more, then more is capable. But most CH-5 chips won't get you 2-2-2 timings above 200MHz with stability, even with 3V+. Then there's the possiblity that you will have some problems getting your memory to run with your board, but this can happen to any board with any memory.
 
I'm not looking for really tight timings, Hopefully it will run at ... C 2.0, 3, 3, 11
 
The CH-5 chips *should* run 2-3-3-11. Best case, though, they'll be able to run around 2-3-2-6. You won't get 2-2-2-X unless you go way under 200. CH-5 chips simply aren't capable of it.
 
I'm pretty sure I have the newer HyperX 3500 with CH-5 chips. I can run two 512 sticks in dual channel at 220fsb, 2-3-2-5 timings. Thats pretty fast if you ask me. In my opinion this BH-5 chip business is overrated.
 
i have a set of buffalo. they dont like high voltage at all. i keep mine at 2.7v but i have heard of ppl have better luck with less voltage. timings are 11,3,3,2( i run at 11 cuz i read you get better performance)
 
I've also heard that the ch-5 chips have some sort of internal voltage regulation, so when you pump more volts to them, it dosn't increase there overclock...? But that is of little concern to me, as I was after a gigabyte of inexpensive ram that could do 200MHz, not super-high performance.

I was initially going to buy some XMS in 2700, 3000, 3200, but with so many different versions of the XMS on the market, with the same rating. It would have been too risky to mail-order 2 sticks and be guaranteed to get the same version number. Thats probably why they sell the TwinX!!
 
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My sticks(CH-5) dont go 200FSB with tight timings. On Barton default (166FSB) they go 2-2-2-5 but on 210FSB only 2.5-3-3-8. High voltages (3V) dont change anything. However tested on 166FSB with 3 different timing setups I got these results in 3D Mark 2001SE:
(Average from 5 tests).

11742. 2-2-2-5
11545, 2.5-3-3-8
11513, 2-2-3-7

However difference in frames between 1st and 2nd score in reality was only 1-2 frames high quallity and 2-3 frames low quallity (game tests in 3D Mark 2100SE).
 
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