Budget RAM overclocking - my feedback

I thought this might help if you're shopping around for budget priced RAM and still want some overclocking potential. If you have your own results from value priced RAM, please add to this thread. and please, no dissing of value RAM; sometimes we can't justify spending double the price for high FSB 1:1 ratio, but we still want the best bang for the buck.

I recently had a chance to try out 3 different sets of dual-channel RAM for my Winnie 3000+ on MSI Neo2 board, along with the one set of RAM I already had, and i noticed something results:

CORSAIR VALUE RAM SUCKS!

Anyways, here are my results. All RAM was either 2.5-3-3-7 or 2.5-3-3-8 at stock, and I kept all at 1T because 2T is way too much of a performance hit.

OEM brand Infineon BT-6 set of sticks: - best overclock speed: 220mhz at 3-4-4-8, 2.85V. It started to need looser timings past 212mhz. This ram has been used for over a year, so it was well burnt-in.

OEM brand Samsung TCCC set of sticks: - bets overclock speed: 215mhz at 3-4-4-8, 2.85V. Not impressed with these, since i thought TCCC could at least hit 230. must've been OEM brand cheap board, or not enough burn-in time.

Corsair Value Select 2x512, not sure what RAM chips are on those: - best overclock speed: 211mhz at 3-4-4-8, 2.85V. pure crap these were.

and, for same price as the Corsair Value, i ended up with OCZ Premier 2x512. best overclock: 238mhz at 2.5-5-5-10, 2.85V. This ram refused to run at CAS 3.0 (which is a good thing; keeping 2.5 all the way up the FSB ladder was impressive, compared to the other Value ram). Another nice thing, this RAM can keep its default timing of 2.5-3-3-7 all the way up to 225mhz. If I go 2T, I can probably push this RAM a bit past 250mhz. And these numbers are from fresh sticks with little burn-in time. I can't wait until these babies are fully burned in.

so if you're shopping around for value ram for a budget oc'ing system, have a strong look at the OCZ Premier. I heard good stuff about OCZ Value VX as well, but they were out of stock in my area.

Since this is here I don't want to make a new topic about it: So which of these Do you guys think is better? Is it worth the extra 20 for a 2.5 CAS instead of a 3? I know very little about the technical parts of RAM, But I dont want to go much over 100 for a GB so is it worth it just to go for the 2nd one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146900

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227213

I have Centon Gemini PC3200 (2x256) in my main rig, and Centon PC2700 (1x256) in one of my other computers. The 3200 can run around 223 with stock 2.5V at 11-3-3-2.5 timings; I could probably lower the 11 down to around 6 or 7, but 11 has the best performance on the nForce2 chipset. With 2.7V (board max), I can be mostly memtest stable around 229 in dual channel mode, not sure about single. I can run Windows fine up to around 235 or so, still at 11-3-3-2.5 timings.
I haven't messed with the 2700 much, but I know it can run around 213 at 7-3-3-2.5. It can also run its SPD 2100 timings at 2700 speeds, timings of 6-2-2-2 (I think).

Stock timings on the 3200 at 200/400 DDR are 8-3-3-3. Stock timings on the 2700 are 7-3-3-2.5 at 166/333 DDR. I'm not sure what chips any of them use.

I sold a decent pair of PC2700 Value Ram from Kingston that was able to go 208 FSB at 2.5-3-2 on 2.7 VDIMM. I bought those sticks when ram prices were still really high. Looking at the chips, it's either Winbond Ch-5, or possibly Bh-6. I hate how kingston relables their stuff. Go around at Office Max or some other place and ask them if you can look at their modules, you could probobly find some Winbond IC's in the lot.

The best value IS gskills ZX, it does 245-250 1t which is amazing for a gig.

has anyone used OCZ enhance latency RAM before... mine is 2-3-2-6... i try it at 212 mhz and ran prime95 found 1 error after the first 6 test. if so can anyone let me know what kind of timming might help me out.

Perhaps this article would be of interest about value ram and how it's not really worth the money to buy expensive ram. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y

I got the 104.00 OCZ value ram.It runs 218 7-3-3-2.5 at 2.8 volts on the stock d27 nf7 bios and to 230 where it will no longer boot with the modded bios.It is likely capable of more with a mod bios but the extra clock cycles slow it down even with 7-2-2-2@229 and video was jerky.It has timings at spd 8-4-4-2.5 but will not boot to 200 at that setting.It seems to clock a little higher each day as burnin continues but allready surpasses my twinmoss.

Mate,

Don't diss Corsair value RAM!
I ran mine at 2.5-3-3-6-1T 217MHz @ 2.8V. I'm pretty sure with 3.0V I'd be able to hit 250. Too bad I don't have them anymore. Let me know if they are on sale (<$70) and I'll take one for the team.

Recent Corsair value stuff IS bottom of the barrel. I got mine in Sept 04. Had Hynix chips on them. I suppose the newer ones may have Micron or Mosel chips (just speculating).

Super Nade said:

Mate,

Don't diss Corsair value RAM!
I ran mine at 2.5-3-3-6-1T 217MHz @ 2.8V. I'm pretty sure with 3.0V I'd be able to hit 250. Too bad I don't have them anymore. Let me know if they are on sale (<$70) and I'll take one for the team.

Recent Corsair value stuff IS bottom of the barrel. I got mine in Sept 04. Had Hynix chips on them. I suppose the newer ones may have Micron or Mosel chips (just speculating).

Click to expand...

yeah, you raise a good point. It all depends what chips are put on these value chips at the time of manufacture. I couldnt tell what these new Corsair value ram had (they looked re-labelled), but it certainly did NOT have any thing like TCC5 or BH-5 or BH-6 or anything like that on it. I took a picture, I'll post it on here later tonite. And these were a very recent batch (about 3 weeks old).

oh, and dont bet on 3.0V being the answer. it seems like Winbond loves lot of volts, but all these value chips i tested didnt budge any higher past 2.9V.

Robrules18 said:

Since this is here I don't want to make a new topic about it: So which of these Do you guys think is better? Is it worth the extra 20 for a 2.5 CAS instead of a 3? I know very little about the technical parts of RAM, But I dont want to go much over 100 for a GB so is it worth it just to go for the 2nd one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146900

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820227213

Click to expand...

something doesnt make sense. I just bought OCZ Premier RAM and they are SPD rated at 2.5-3-3-7, not 3-4-4-8. Here is a link:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...O261-6002&SRCCODE=SHOPPINGDF&CMP=OTC-SHOPPING

also, they have copper RAM sinks on them.

Tiesto said:

something doesnt make sense. I just bought OCZ Premier RAM and they are SPD rated at 2.5-3-3-7, not 3-4-4-8. Here is a link:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...O261-6002&SRCCODE=SHOPPINGDF&CMP=OTC-SHOPPING

also, they have copper RAM sinks on them.

Click to expand...

I think the ones you bought are a slightly different revision, being the the Model numbers are different:

OCZ4001024PDC-K (yours)
OCZ4001024V3DC-K (mine)

EDIT: looked on OCZ site and they have the version you got listed by only Monarch still carries it. I think the Premier version on Newegg is the "new" model and its has looser timimings and is 20 bucks cheaper and has no heatspreaders.

What's so bad about PC4000 RAM vs. PC3200? My Geil Ultra does 250Mhz at 2.5-3-3-7-1t at 3.0V. I think that's pretty solid - and for $133 you can't beat the price.

Maybe people think tight timings come with only PC3200 sticks?

My Samsung TCCC 512mb modules weren't all that bad. They would do 217FSB @ 2.5-3-3-11 with 2.9V. and 225 @ 2.5-3-3.12 @ 3.2V.

Quigsby said:

What's so bad about PC4000 RAM vs. PC3200? My Geil Ultra does 250Mhz at 2.5-3-3-7-1t at 3.0V. I think that's pretty solid - and for $133 you can't beat the price.

Maybe people think tight timings come with only PC3200 sticks?

Click to expand...

Well i'm buying it for an XP system so anything more than 3200 isnt really worth it IMO.

I have Corsair VS. They don't overclock worth a damn. I got errors at 215 Mhz at 2.5-3-3-11 timings. So I decided to forget overclocking them and just run 'em at PC3200 speeds. I only paid 81 bucks so I'm not losing any sweat over it. Once I switch A64 it won't really matter what speed my RAM is too much.

I have 2 sticks of GeiL value 3200 (haven't taken the heatspreaders off so I don't know what chips they are) but they do 2-2-3-5 at 210 Mhz with 2.9V (after a good burn-in) which I have been very impressed by. I think the original timings were 2.5-3-3-6.

On the other hand, the Corsair Value Select 2700 I had before wouldn't budge more than about 25-30 mhz at the stock timings even with plenty of juice.

Quigsby said:

What's so bad about PC4000 RAM vs. PC3200? My Geil Ultra does 250Mhz at 2.5-3-3-7-1t at 3.0V. I think that's pretty solid - and for $133 you can't beat the price.

Maybe people think tight timings come with only PC3200 sticks?

Click to expand...

that's some good sticks of ram you got there.

and yes, i think many shy away from PC4000 RAM since they are (for the most part) listed with very loose timings compared to PC3200 RAM.

what exactly is PC4000 rated up to? 225mhz?

man my corsair value select will only give me 210mhz at 2.5-4-4-8

The gskill zx's are 95 a gig on egg, and they do 230-250 1t, with decent timings and low voltage.