• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Need Help with BH vs TCCD

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

aznkc730

Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2004
Location
los angeles, ca
Hey guys, from the gist of this forum, it seems that the differences in BH and TCCD are this:

TCCD can do higher fsb at lower voltages but with loose timings
BH can't do high fsb, requires more voltage but has the tightest timings

I've been looking at what kind of memory I want to buy, and I've decided on the Geil ONE series memory. It comes in both TCCD and BH flavors. (www.geilusa.com/products.asp)

Ideally, I'm gonna try to get my venice 3200 to run at 2.8ghz (280HTT x 10). so my questions are:

at what FSB do the timings for TCCD have to be loosened? (for example at PC3200, both the BH and TCCD geil one sticks do 1.5 2 2 5)

can BH reach DDR600 with the same loose 2.5 4 4 7 timings as TCCD? or does it top out below that fsb no matter what the timings are?

and lastly, is the BH on the Geil ONE sticks bh-5 or BH-6 or UTT? (even though geil calls it BH it only specifies it at winbond IC) I can't seem to find that info anywhere.

From the tests posted on the forum, it seems that BH chips keep up with TCCD despite the huge gap in FSB due to their different bandwidth efficiencies. it seems like if BH could run at 275 or so HTT, TCCD would need about 320 or so HTT. can mobo's even run at that HTT?
 
alright. in cronilogical order of your questions.

1) around ddr440, give or take, TCCD's timings must be loosened from 2-2-2-5 to 2-3-3-6 or 2.5-3-3-6.

2) Geil One BH can not reach ddr600 with the same loose 2.5-4-4-7 timings as TCCD. It tops out at lower despite looser timings and higher voltage

3)Geil One BH is BH-UTT or "new" bh-5. this is very debated as UTT cant come in 256mb sticks, or so i hear, and this Geil One BH comes in 256mb sticks.

4) Mobos can definately run at 320 HTT stable all day long.

5) UTT at ddr500 2-2-2-5 ~= ddr600 2.5-3-3-7. so for TCCD to be equal to UTT at ddr550 2-2-2-5 would hafta be at like ddr660 2.5-3-3-7, which isnt gonna happen. period. UTT at ddr550 is VERY rare too.
 
Allow me to add from my experience.

TCCD @ DDR600:

  • CAS must be set to at least 2.5
  • Only very good/excellent TCCD will operate at 2.5-3-3-x timings. Those are usually rated PC4800 upwards and are a bit expensive. If you decide to go that route, I would back Patriot XBLK PC4800/5000 for the price. The regular PC3200 parts, if they hit DDR600 will run at 2.5-3-4-x-1T
  • With the new TCCD, 2.9+ V is almost a pre-requisite to attain DDR600, so you will need active cooling as [email protected] = hot
  • I have found that in the long term, high HTT can be a problem, especially if your windows install is not properly maintained. High HTT raises the failure threshold of your OS

BH-5 @ 2-2-2-2-1T:
  • There is no point in running BH-5 at CAS 2.5. In fact I very much doubt you can run it like TCCD, simply because as you increase the VDRAM, you would have to change the Drive strength (increase it) and this means loose timings will lead to tremendous instability. If you look at the timings I have used HERE , you would notice that I had to up my Drive Strength to 6. This entailed tightening all timings by a vast amount (when compared to my TCCD in the same thread).If I loosened the timings, I get zillions of memtest errors. So, I doubt one could simply run BH like TCCD.
  • You need high voltages to run BH type RAM. Most motherboards do not offer this option.You will need a booster type device. That is extra $'s.
  • Running high voltages stresses the voltage regulators on the motherboard and produces quite a bit of heat. The heat issue can be managed by good cooling. Nothing can be done about the slow degradation of your MoBo.
  • Tighter timings are advantageous when gaming and the lower HTT doesn't have a detrimental effect on your Windows install.
  • It is almost impossible to find BH which will run at 275-280MHz while maintaining 2-2-2-x timings, so that should be ruled out

My BH doesn't offer the same bandwidth as my TCCD (according to synthetic benchmarks), but since I was having a problem due to high HTT, I would prefer BH. The points I made are by no means exhaustive and are highly dependent on your ancillary components like the PSU, MoBo, CPU etc.

To conclude, I would say that there is no definitive answer to your question. It is a matter of taste and buying the shoe that fits best.

Hope this helps.

S-N
 
CCUABIDExORxDIE said:
3)Geil One BH is BH-UTT or "new" bh-5. this is very debated as UTT cant come in 256mb sticks, or so i hear, and this Geil One BH comes in 256mb sticks.

I purchased 4 of the 256MB TwinMOS Speed Premiums with the original UTT (CH die). I can't say for sure about the UTT BH being available in 256MB sticks, but the CH sure was.

My 256MB CH sticks are single-sided so I don't know why there couldn't be the same in the BH flavored UTT.
 
i got a question?? did those 256mb sticks act like old bh-5 did in 256mb sticks?? i was talking to gautum, who for some reason didnt think UTT could be made into 256mb sticks, something about single sided. i dunno, it didnt make sense to me either, hense the "or so i hear"
 
I can't tell you any about UTT, but I am running TCCD @300 1:1 2.5-4-3-9. But running them @ DDR500, 2.5-3-3-8 (5/6 divider) cpu same, lowered Everest latency and better SISandra score. check the links on my sig.
 
CCUABIDExORxDIE said:
i got a question?? did those 256mb sticks act like old bh-5 did in 256mb sticks?? i was talking to gautum, who for some reason didnt think UTT could be made into 256mb sticks, something about single sided. i dunno, it didnt make sense to me either, hense the "or so i hear"

While my MSI K8N Neo2 seems to run original BH5/6 pretty good, it doesn't like UTT nearly as much. The four TwinMOS SP 256 sticks range 250-258, but I've got several 2x256 sets of original bh-5 and bh-6 running 265-270+ on the same mobo/cpu combo. One thing to keep in mind is that the original bh-5/6 has almost all been purchased used, meaning it had been "burned in", while the UTT is all new and has very few hours on them, relative to the original stuff.

My 2x512 sets of UTT struggle to hit 250 and most don't hit 250 so in that respect it is similar to original Winbond...in that the 256 sticks clock higher than the 512 sticks, or at least for me they do.

Did I answer your question or did I go off on a tangent?
 
I have two 256MB UTT sticks so they extist.

The CH die stuff (AA4T iirc is the "stepping" twinmos used for CH die UTT) ran up to 260MHz stable. The one I "killed" oddly enough was the BH die stuff (1A4T iirc). It ran 208MHz @ 2-2-2-5 at 2.8v like BH (actually I think thats a smidge better than hat most BH would do) but would top out at 230MHz at 3.6v. I think it had one slow chip on it. It was an iffy stick from the start in any case as it would get errors at stock. It had to be run at 2-2-2-5 at 2.8v to be stable at 200MHz. The stock timings with extra voltage didn't help. It "died" at 4.8v while the CH stuff lived which is kind of out of character as CH should die before BH at those voltages. It was an accidental deal where I dialed the pot on the DDR booster the wrong way.

I then bought my Balistix & it performs better than UTT at the same MHz (300MB/s more bandwidth) from my tests. It can run 2.5-2-2-5 @ 250MHz so that works for me hehe. The funny thing was the BH-UTT stick came back to life last week. Go figure! It'll go into another rig I guess, or I may see how it mixes with the Balistix. Should be fun to test lol. I imagine the results will not be super as the Ch die stuff needs an extra few tenths of a volt to perform at 250MHz but its worth playing with.
 
The "back from the dead" story is a common UTT story. Unfortunately, some sticks develop a pattern of dying and returning, then simply dying.

I think UnTesTed equates to UnReliable and for me, I've bought my last UTT sticks. I'll keep what I have because they have their place in DDR history, just like original Winbond and TCCD, but I don't recommend them anymore.
 
I'm not sure if one can compare bandwidth per MHz faithfully as the test conditions are being changed. A lot depends on other timings as well. So, truly speaking, BW per MHz per se, is a wrong metric to consider. What would be right is BW/MHz with the best and most stable settings (which is assumed in most cases anyway). I'm splitting hairs here, but so the subtilties of the DRAM business. :)

I am getting a set of OCZ PC3200 UTT to play around with, secure in the nowledge that if I'm dissatisfied, I can expect top notch customer service. Epect a BH5 v/s UTT shootout soon.
 
Super Nade said:
Allow me to add from my experience.

TCCD @ DDR600:

  • CAS must be set to at least 2.5
  • Only very good/excellent TCCD will operate at 2.5-3-3-x timings. Those are usually rated PC4800 upwards and are a bit expensive. If you decide to go that route, I would back Patriot XBLK PC4800/5000 for the price. The regular PC3200 parts, if they hit DDR600 will run at 2.5-3-4-x-1T
  • With the new TCCD, 2.9+ V is almost a pre-requisite to attain DDR600, so you will need active cooling as [email protected] = hot
  • I have found that in the long term, high HTT can be a problem, especially if your windows install is not properly maintained. High HTT raises the failure threshold of your OS

BH-5 @ 2-2-2-2-1T:
  • There is no point in running BH-5 at CAS 2.5. In fact I very much doubt you can run it like TCCD, simply because as you increase the VDRAM, you would have to change the Drive strength (increase it) and this means loose timings will lead to tremendous instability. If you look at the timings I have used HERE , you would notice that I had to up my Drive Strength to 6. This entailed tightening all timings by a vast amount (when compared to my TCCD in the same thread).If I loosened the timings, I get zillions of memtest errors. So, I doubt one could simply run BH like TCCD.
  • You need high voltages to run BH type RAM. Most motherboards do not offer this option.You will need a booster type device. That is extra $'s.
  • Running high voltages stresses the voltage regulators on the motherboard and produces quite a bit of heat. The heat issue can be managed by good cooling. Nothing can be done about the slow degradation of your MoBo.
  • Tighter timings are advantageous when gaming and the lower HTT doesn't have a detrimental effect on your Windows install.
  • It is almost impossible to find BH which will run at 275-280MHz while maintaining 2-2-2-x timings, so that should be ruled out

My BH doesn't offer the same bandwidth as my TCCD (according to synthetic benchmarks), but since I was having a problem due to high HTT, I would prefer BH. The points I made are by no means exhaustive and are highly dependent on your ancillary components like the PSU, MoBo, CPU etc.

To conclude, I would say that there is no definitive answer to your question. It is a matter of taste and buying the shoe that fits best.

Hope this helps.

S-N


seriously, thanks for all your advice (that includes everyone else who has given their 2 cents in this post). My setup is basically a DFI UT lan party SLI-DR (i can set mem volt up to 4 on this baby), ocz 520W powerstream, and venice 3200_ (god damn 146 opterons can't be found in stock anywhere! :bang head ). I have a watercooling setup, with 2 80mm fans blowing on the ram. if need be, i will be watercooling my ram with these:

http://www.koolance.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=251

heat will not be an issue in my case. I am somewhat of a serious gamer, so I guess I will be going with the BH for the lower timings.

Before I buy, i just have one last question:

at what fsb do the BH top out at usually? 260ish?
 
Wow! That is a nice cooling setup. :drool:

You can expect 260-270MHz with good BH. I would suggest that you try to procure used, original BH-5 first. DFI NF4 People have had issues with UTT, so it could be a hit and miss. Mushkin hvae stopped selling UTT sticks because of the number of RMA's being requested. I don't know if it is a Mushkin specific issue or if it is a UTT specific issue. As Reefa nicely said, UTT is a bit of a crapshoot.

Take your time, get original BH-5 and see how things pan out. Let me tell you that TCCD has almost zero compatability issues with the DFI NF4.
 
a BH UTT crapshoot kinda sucks if TCCD has no compatibility issues with DFI boards. I think its a great idea that I look for original BH-5 sticks first, but where?

Also, how much is 2x512mb original BH5 gonna cost?
 
im not having any luck with my utt bh-5 in my neo 2 at all. Wont do past about 230 with 2-2-2-5 1t. I would kill for some TCCD based sticks.
 
aznkc730 said:
a BH UTT crapshoot kinda sucks if TCCD has no compatibility issues with DFI boards. I think its a great idea that I look for original BH-5 sticks first, but where?

Also, how much is 2x512mb original BH5 gonna cost?

You could try the anandtech forums or e-bay. I would budget for a max of $200. Anything below $180 is a good deal for vinatge BH. It getting really hard to find them these days. That's why I jumped on a set as soon as I saw them (Thanks to Ri0) :)

Chris, the Ne02 like the DFI is pretty tempermental. You have to spend a LOT of time coaxing the two boards to perform at their best.
 
many ppl say BH runs at 260MHz 2-2-2-6 produce the best performance than any other DDR. Even TCCD runs at 300MHz 2.5-4-4-8.

I think the OCZ PC4000EB is a balanced choice, it able to runs at 270MHz-280MHz @ 3-3-2-8.

I see a system use this ram provide 7.4GB/s awesome bandwidth.
 
have had a gig bh-5 and i m using now a gig tccd...

for benching i would take all the way bh-5 great timings,high fsb=great scores

why did i switch to tccd...3,4 vdmm killed my bh-5 sticks slowly(fan blowing over em,hs off),first they made 248@2-2-2-11 in my old xp rig,after 4 month they only made 234 fsb with similar settings...

my pqi will do 265@2,5-3-3-8 dual in my arock dual-sata2 and this board has lowsy vdim options(think its like:low,high,auto...)
 
Back