Ram timings

denix · Sep 2, 2007

I have four sticks of 1Gb Crucial Ballistix PC-6200 ram. It's rated for 4-4-4-12 at that speed, and CPU-Z confirms this. (Says SPD reports 4-4-4-12 for 400, 5-5-5-18 for 533)

I have a Q6600 (B3, *sigh* wanted a G0) with an Asus P5K-E. I've been working on overclocking the CPU and settled for a speed of 3.0Ghz, at 333x9. I tried 400x8 for 3.2Ghz... It was stable, but a bit hotter than I'd like.

For testing this, I set my memory timings to 'Auto' in the BIOS, which CPU-Z reported at 5-5-5-18. I tried reducing my timings to 4-4-4-12, but I couldn't get a stable overclock. Vista X64 kept freezing when I ran prime95.

I've tried running at 4-4-4-12 at both 333Mhz and 400Mhz, but both cause the same vista-freezing effect when I try this, so I've had to go back to 5-5-5-18.

Any ideas on why this happens, and if there's anything I can do about it?

A second question: Is it better to run my ram at 333Mhz for a speed of 1:1, or at 400Mhz? My mobo will let me choose.

th3 · Sep 2, 2007

What voltage? Crucial recommends 2.2v for 800MHz 4-4-4-12. They can do it on just above 2v but default 1.8v is too low for sure.

Dragonprince · Sep 2, 2007

I'd say you need to look at voltage for not just the ram but the chipset too. Theres no way your going to get the ram running at a higher fsb speed of 333 or 400 without a voltage boost (especially with 4 sticks) and every board is slightly different. Its also likely you'll have to loosen the timings to the 5-5-5-18 not because of the ram but because of the chipset, especially with 4 sticks. To get 333 on my board I have to set the MCH voltage at 1.50v manually (400 requires 1.6v) and 2.2v for the ram. Forget "auto" voltage, thats for stock systems. I run 24/7 at 334x9 on my e6600 and it is absolutely stable as long as I set everything manually. Also make sure your turning off all of the power saving features like speed step and things like hyperpath if your board has those features.

Unless your running stock settings all around your probably going to have some issues with 4 sticks of ram so try taking 2 out and testing that way. If its stable with 2 and you put the other 2 back in and it goes bad then you have the common scenario of not being able to OC very much with all the ram slots filled. Outside of the cool factor of saying you have 4 gig theres not much benefit over 2 gig anyway. You might have to choose between 4 gig and a good OC....

denix · Sep 2, 2007

Dragonprince said:
I'd say you need to look at voltage for not just the ram but the chipset too. Theres no way your going to get the ram running at a higher fsb speed of 333 or 400 without a voltage boost (especially with 4 sticks) and every board is slightly different. Its also likely you'll have to loosen the timings to the 5-5-5-18 not because of the ram but because of the chipset, especially with 4 sticks.

Well, as I said I can get it stable at 400x8, but just a bit too hot for my liking... So I don't have a problem running my FSB at 400. At which point my RAM was running at 5-5-5-18, like you suggested. I ran prime95 on all 4 cores at 400x8 for 24 hours without trouble.

What I'm trying to do is get it down to 4-4-4-12 if I can. (At 333, not 400 -- at least until I can get some better cooling)

My guess is that upping my ram voltage will help with this. I'm at work ATM but as soon as I get home I'll be trying this out. I figured that as my ram is rated for running at 400Mhz/4-4-4-12, it would do this on stock volts.

Dragonprince said:
Outside of the cool factor of saying you have 4 gig theres not much benefit over 2 gig anyway. You might have to choose between 4 gig and a good OC....

Maybe for gaming that's true. There are plenty of things you can do with your computer that take full advantage of 4Gb though. Personally, I run a lot of pro audio software on mine, and when running some of the monstrous sample libraries available these days, you can run out of memory pretty quickly.

jason4207 · Sep 2, 2007

denix said:
I figured that as my ram is rated for running at 400Mhz/4-4-4-12, it would do this on stock volts.

...rated being the key word here. It's rated for those speeds, but only at 2.2v. Look at the specs for the RAM. From what I've seen so far MoBos don't set the voltage right automatically.

Dragonprince · Sep 2, 2007

denix said:
What I'm trying to do is get it down to 4-4-4-12 if I can. (At 333, not 400 -- at least until I can get some better cooling)

* As long as you understand 333 is stressing the ram more than 400...

Personally, I run a lot of pro audio software on mine, and when running some of the monstrous sample libraries available these days, you can run out of memory pretty quickly.

* I do quite a bit of video work and have not found a need for more than 2 gig yet. My audio work is basically limited to encoding/recoding so 2 gig is plenty for my audio work.

th3 · Sep 2, 2007

Got a friend who is doing pro audio stuff, cubase mostly, he dont need so incredible many tracks before his 2GB RAM fills up. In one small studio where he sometimes do recordings they have 8GB in the main workstation (dual Opteron dualcores). I dont know much about pro audio but obviously these boys are at a somewhat more advanced level than me and my occasional AC3 conversions, so i would tend to not try to advise them how much RAM they need

denix · Sep 2, 2007

Dragonprince said:
* As long as you understand 333 is stressing the ram more than 400...

Really? I don't understand why. Could you explain?

--

Anyway, I tried pumping the DRAM voltage up to 2.2. It was on 'auto' before, and from what I can tell my mobo isn't all that conservative with it's 'auto' settings.. Although CPU-Z wouldn't tell me what it had actually set it to.

However, after upping the voltage, I experienced the same problems. Vista is OK until I start running prime95, then it starts freezing.

--

Also, I'm still unclear on whether it's better to run ram at a matching speed with the FSB (333) or at a faster one (400). I'm sorry if this is a newbie question.. It's been a long time since I've had the cash to build a new PC, and things have come on a fair bit since then. ;-)

jason4207 · Sep 2, 2007

List your BIOS settings if you can, but 1:1 is best for now. You may have to give voltage elsewhere to get stable. You could try dropping your multi, and if your stable then it might be your Vcore needs to be increased. If your too hot already then maybe a re-mount is in order.

List your BIOS settings, and your idle/load temps according to the latest beta CoreTemp.

What kind of cooling do you have?

Ram timings

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