NF7-s Dual Channel Memory breaks overclock.

I've been running a 2400 XP (TB rev B) with a nf7-s 2.0 at 2.2 GHZ (11x200) for a while. The ram was on stick of 512 MB corsair 3200 xms. I recently bought a second stick of corsair 3200 XMS. The ram are as close I could get to being identicle, but the newer stuff says 1.2 and the older stuff is 1.1. Basically the newer stuff just has better timings.

Anyway I have them in both slot 1 and 3 and my system won't post at all at 200 FPB. It will post at 166, but crash in Windows. It runs stable at 133 with both sticks. The old stick obviously works fine. When I tried the new stick by itself, it only was stable up to about 190 mhz which is not its rated speed obviously.

I have tried these using various BIOS setting including voltage for everything and CPU interface.

When the system does not post it will give me a series of LONG beeps. I have to restart 3 or 4 times for the BIOS to go to default settings.

Any suggestions?

Try to change timings - sometimes it helps. (increase CAS)

Have you tested them on 2nd and 3rd slot? I think those slots are dedicated to work in Dual Chanel Mode (at least in NF7 rev. 2.0)

Regardless of how well dual channel does or doesn't work, if the new stick doesn't run at it's rated speed, RMA it.

Yeah, I'm shipping it when I get off work today. My friends comp has an almost identical stick (it says 1.2, but it has the same default timings as my 1.1) and it works flawlessly with the original when in dual channel and overclocked to 11x200.

And yes I did change timings, I raised the voltage, and I tried both slots 1 and 3 and 2 and 3.

The sticks are all the same speed and brand, but the newer one has faster timings. That wouldn't screw things up with dual channel would it? I did set the timings to the lowest common denominator (or highest if you want to be technical).

are you sure the newest one (1.2) has tighter timings? if you're talking about the xms3200LL (rather than the xms3200c2), i believe the 1.1 had bh-5 chips and the 1.2 has ch-5 chips (1.1 rated 2-2-2, 1.2 rated 2-3-2). in which case, the older one has tighter timings. ch-5 chips will not run 2-2-2 @ 200mhz, regardless. particularly, it's the 2nd "2", the RAS-CAS delay, which it cannot take.

i'd try doing your 11x200 @ 2-3-2 (with the 3 being RAS->CAS delay), as that is the stock timings for the new xms3200LL.

changing cas from 2 -> 2.5 is not as "difficult" as changing RAS->CAS delay from 3 -> 2. additionally, you get a larger performance decrease chaging RAS->CAS delay from 2 to 3, than the decrease going from CAS2 to CAS2.5. it is a rather common misconception.

ch-5 ram cannot do 2.5-2-2, but can do 2-3-2. if it can't do 2-3-2 @ 200mhz, than i agree you should rma. but you can't determine that from only trying 2.5-2-2.

Well its been RMA'd and I'll be getting a duplicate one back, but I tried the stick by itself when I had it at its default timings as assigned by the bios, and that didn't work. I even raised the timings higher then the default timing and it still was not working at 400 mhz. The old one is 1.1, and the new one is 1.2LL. It's default timings as assigned by the BIOS were much lower than what the 1.1 is assigned by default, yet the 1.1 could hit and beat the timings the newer one was supposed to have @400 mhz, while the 1.2 couldn't even hit 400 mhz at ANY setting.

I don't know what the names of each setting is, but as set in bios,
the old stick would be default at: 8, 3, 3, 2.5 and was lowered
to: 5, 2, 2, 2.0. The other stick would default at: 6, 2, 3, 2.0, but couldn't do it at its rated speed.I think those timings are right.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, and thanks for your response.

I had a very similar problem trying to get a 1.1 and a 1.2 stick working together. They really don't seem to like each other. The L12 mod helped my overclock a lot, but I later found out that the 1.2 stick was just plain bad. The 1.1 sticks are excellent overclockers - mine did 230MHz 2-2-2-11 @ 2.9v!

You might look at either getting a different stick of memory (BH-5 if you can) or just exchanging both sticks. Even after RMA'ing my 1.2 stick, I still had lots of problems.

Also, Memtest86 is a good diagnostic for this stuff.

Wolfmist said:

I don't know what the names of each setting is, but as set in bios,
the old stick would be default at: 8, 3, 3, 2.5 and was lowered
to: 5, 2, 2, 2.0. The other stick would default at: 6, 2, 3, 2.0, but couldn't do it at its rated speed.I think those timings are right.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner, and thanks for your response.

Click to expand...

Right sorry, Corsair probably didn't make the SPD timings in their 1.1 3200LL too aggressive. But it definitely has the BH-5 Chips, which is why you can run 2-2-2-x at >200mhz. But there is no doubt that the 1.1 is far superior to the newer 1.2. The fact that they're both Corsair 3200LL isn't important, it's the fact that one is BH-5 and CH-5, which is why they're probably not running Dual Channel too well. It may even be better if you could exchange that 1.2 3200LL for a 3500C2 stick, which I *believe* is still BH-5 according to Corsair's TheRamGuy (this may have changed recently though, I'm not sure).

If you can't get another BH-5 stick, probably your best bet would be to try running dual channel @ 2-3-2 timings (hopefully, your RMA stick can run these timings well). But if johan's experience is any indication, you may have trouble with that any ways given the different IC's on the two sticks....

thats odd, my corsair value pc3200 wont do past 190fsb at 2-2-2-11 but did 220 at 2.5-2-2-11

I run my Corsair 2x256mb V1.2 PC3200LL @ 223 2-3-2-11 @ 2.65v.

I'd like to get another bh-5, but I know I will probably get another 3200LL (POS).

Newegg doesn't have 3500 ram anymore. Its 3200, then 3700. The 3700 default timings are pretty high(3-4-4-8), and I doubt it has the BH-5 chips in it as it is newer. Hopefully I'll get a good stick that can run close to what my BH-5 stick can do.

I honestly do video editing and use photoshop a lot. So in addition to playing the latest PC games, having low latency in combonation to having 1 GB of memory is important. Fortunately I know that my system works fine @ 3200 speeds with my friends stick of xms3200 1.2. Whether or not its BH-5, I don't know, but I do know it doesn't OC as good as mine does. So if this new stick still can't play nice with my old one, I'll just have my friend buy astick of 3200LL for his comp (he does want to), and we can join the two new ones together, and put the two old ones together.

Johan, what kind of problems did you have when you mixed the two?

Also for anyone that wants to answer, how much will it lower performance in games to raise the timings from
2-2-2-5 to 2-3-2-11? And where is the right balance between tight timings and a higher fsb for Althon XP systems, specifically ones with thoroughbred cores?