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help with ram upgrade.

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dbcalo

Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2003
ok, right now i have some geil pc3200 value sticks. i bought them in the hopes that i would be able to over clock somewhat, but since i cannot i plan to purchase some better sticks in the next couple of months. i have been unable to overclock them past fsb 200 with them successfully. my motherboard is definately capable of much more. other people with it can overclock to a 250fsb.

so my question to you guys is, what sticks of ram should i get? i would idealy like to get something that can be used when i upgrade to amd 64 later on in 2005. i would love to get some ram that can give me the best bang for my buck. also, when will it be necessary to upgrade to ddr2?

basically i would like to find some ram for at, or around, $150 that would work well for what i want to do.
 
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i need a little more info. are u saying it wont oc past 200 at 1-1.?if not try5/4 ,also try using loosest timings,all mem tweeks turned off.
 
flapperhead said:
i need a little more info. are u saying it wont oc past 200 at 1-1.?if not try5/4 ,also try using loosest timings,all mem tweeks turned off.

i've tried looser timinngs before, but the ram just cant make it past prime 95 at anything past 200. i've only been able to get it to go to 205 stable with looser timings. i do have somewhat of a maxed out power supply and i've already ordered a new one, but i don't suspect that it is the cuprit behind the low overclock.

anyway, i'm just looking for something that i can upgrade to maybe in the next 3-4 months.
 
dbcalo said:
i've tried looser timinngs before, but the ram just cant make it past prime 95 at anything past 200. i've only been able to get it to go to 205 stable with looser timings. i do have somewhat of a maxed out power supply and i've already ordered a new one, but i don't suspect that it is the cuprit behind the low overclock.

anyway, i'm just looking for something that i can upgrade to maybe in the next 3-4 months.
have u tried a 5/4 ratio???
 
I also have geil value pc3200 and can't oc the ram very well. I can easily achieve a stable 3.8ghz with my p4 3.2, but only at a 5:4 ratio with the ram running basically underclocked. I've tried every possible timing combination there is, and this ram just wont run at any acceptable overclock.

Suffice to say, geil value ram is a bad choice, unfortunately I didn't know that at the time. tell me something, do you run your ram in dual channel mode? Because I specifically bought a 2 stick set of geil dual channel matched pair value ram (1GB) and it wont run in dual channel no matter what I do. Geil is crap in my eyes now.

I'd go with some mushkin ram if you are willing to spend the cash. Otherwise, ocz and crucial are a good buy if you want a good value and moderate overclockability.
 
Prodigious said:
I also have geil value pc3200 and can't oc the ram very well. I can easily achieve a stable 3.8ghz with my p4 3.2, but only at a 5:4 ratio with the ram running basically underclocked. I've tried every possible timing combination there is, and this ram just wont run at any acceptable overclock.

Suffice to say, geil value ram is a bad choice, unfortunately I didn't know that at the time. tell me something, do you run your ram in dual channel mode? Because I specifically bought a 2 stick set of geil dual channel matched pair value ram (1GB) and it wont run in dual channel no matter what I do. Geil is crap in my eyes now.

I'd go with some mushkin ram if you are willing to spend the cash. Otherwise, ocz and crucial are a good buy if you want a good value and moderate overclockability.

ya, mine runs in dual channel. i was looking at the muskin ram as well, but wasn't sure if there was something around the same price range -- maybe even under it -- that performed similarly and overclocked nicely.

is pqi any good? also is it terrably important to get matching sticks?

are these mushkin sticks good, and does anyone know what they might be capable of? http://www.mushkin.com/epages/Mushk...d003a9e422740c0a801020628/Product/View/991368

http://www.mushkin.com/epages/Mushk...d003a9e422740c0a801020628/Product/View/991140
 
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is it better to have low timings and stock fsb, or is it better to have higher timings and oc'ed fsb?
 
The URLs you gave both point to the Mushkin homepage. Hard to tell what sticks you mean.
I have mushkin level one PC3200 with heatspreaders and they OC to 233 fsb with a 1:1 divider @2.5-3-3-8 and 2.8 volts. (stock is 2-3-2-7)

I would say that OC'd RAM with looser timings will be faster. But it depends on the extent of the OC.
 
For overall system performance, Oced FSB with loose timings. It all depends on your RAM though, it RAM is limiting you, about all you can do is loosen the timings and ratio to keep it under 200 and jack FSB. If you get good RAM, you can do both, not one or the other. Its all about the coinage, good RAM isn’t cheap, basically you get what you pay for. :)

DDR2 still sucks IMO. Until the manufacturers figure out how to get CAS down its not going to perform better than any regular RAM. It will just cost you twice as much. On the other hand, when DDR2 2-2-2-5 is created it should be twice as fast! :O
 
Eldonko said:
For overall system performance, Oced FSB with loose timings. It all depends on your RAM though, it RAM is limiting you, about all you can do is loosen the timings and ratio to keep it under 200 and jack FSB. If you get good RAM, you can do both, not one or the other. Its all about the coinage, good RAM isn’t cheap, basically you get what you pay for. :)

DDR2 still sucks IMO. Until the manufacturers figure out how to get CAS down its not going to perform better than any regular RAM. It will just cost you twice as much. On the other hand, when DDR2 2-2-2-5 is created it should be twice as fast! :O

thats good to know. thanks. :)
 
CQCSGordon said:
Actually DDR2 does not cost twice as much it is almost the same.
How did this get onto DDR2?
The Mushkin page in the link is their homepage with DDR2 advertising.
dbcalo has DDR RAM and cannot use DDR2 in his motherboard. Now I see that is a question in his original post. DDR2 RAM has a different number of pins than DDR RAM and while there are motherboards that use either, I don't think you have one (I may be wrong but you have not shared system specs)
 
fabulouscoops said:
How did this get onto DDR2?
The Mushkin page in the link is their homepage with DDR2 advertising.
dbcalo has DDR RAM and cannot use DDR2 in his motherboard. Now I see that is a question in his original post. DDR2 RAM has a different number of pins than DDR RAM and while there are motherboards that use either, I don't think you have one (I may be wrong but you have not shared system specs)

my current systems specs are in my signature, and attempting to get information so i can upgrade down the line. my question about ddr2 was purely to know if it would be worth upgrading to in the near future -- with a motherboard upgrade that would support it. basically i would really like to know which memory would be the safest bet to go with, and would overclock to a decent degree.
 
You can run sandra soft to test memory bandwidth. Generaly speaking you are better off withlower latency on the nforce2. There is no garentee that it is your memory many of the nfoce2 bords hit a wall at 200 MH. You might see if a friend has a P4 system to see if the memory will over clock if you cnat adjust the memory timing. Not all CPU's overclock well and neither do all MBs.
 
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