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questions, questions... RAM

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djlst

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Sep 25, 2008
Hi!
I loving this whole new world of oc'ing and am wanting to change my 4 1gb sticks over to 2 2gb sticks to achieve a better oc.

With only 2 sticks I can oc much further at 800mzh with the 4-4-4-12 timings whereas with 4 sticks I have to lower to 5-5-5-15 and 667mhz well before I reach my cpu's max oc and the cpu also seems to heat up more.


MSI states about my m/b, "DDR2 1000MHz must achieve via overclocking" meaning there is no option in bios to set RAM faster than 800mhz.

Should I be looking for a ddr 1066 kit or a 800 kit???

I notice most of the 1066 kits only get as low as 5-5-5-15 with timings but I'm assuming most 800 kits would have to be lowered to that anyway with higher oc's??? right??

To sum up, 800 or 1066?
Is there a good 800 4gb kit that can oc beyond 900mhz at 4-4-4-12?
Will I even notice a difference between CL4 and CL5? 3dMark just does.
Or is a 1066mhz 4gb kit the way to go?? Not much price difference at all.

Thanks guys, sorry for the rant but i seem to be traveling in circles right now and cant decide.
 
Go with the 1066 as it gives more headroom and there is a little more tweaking you can do due to the timings.
 
Ok thanks guys, so 1066 is probably the go. I've had my eye on the OCZ reapers, and Corsair Dominators.
Both are roughly the same price over here in Australia....
Good choice too?
 
Last edited:
I would get the reapers. Im not too keen on the Domintors. Do they stil have the D9s in them cause when i had them they died on me after like a year
 
You mention that you're using an MSI mobo. Anecdotally, MSI boards are kinda hit-or-miss with regard to various reliability issues. Specifically, my MSI board (X48 Platinum) is REALLY picky about memory. I couldn't get either OCZ Reapers or Kingston Value to work reliably. Even over-volting, stress tests would cause the system to crash very quickly.

Ultimately, I decided to buy Crucial, and that made a HUGE difference. Still, this being an MSI mobo, I found that I had to boost the voltage from 1.5v (these are DDR3 RAMs) to 1.54v. This is at the very least a characteristic of this MODEL of board, because I had MSI send me another one, and it was actually WORSE. Design flaw or being on the edge of tolerances. Anyhow, only Crucial has been 100% reliable. With both the OCZ and Kingston, my system was crashing all over the place.

Crucial does sell high-perf memories too, but I got the basic ones and then just did systematic testing to OC them. Crucial costs more, but it's worth it because they're so much more reliable. They also guarantee that the memory will work flawlessly with your board (if they've certified that, which they had with mine) or your money back. In my case, I would have saved a lot of money if I'd gone with Crucial to begin with, because I wouldn't have had to pay the restocking fee on the OCZ and also have some Kingstons sitting around useless.

I've built lots of systems and used memories from Crucial, Kingston, OCZ, Corsair, and several others. Only Crucial has worked flawlessly with all motherboards under all conditions. Memory is the the number one area where you should NOT go cheap.

Some people want to sacrifice reliability for performance. They think that they'll get a few more FPS in their online shoot'em'up game. The problem is that if you get a memory access fault, sometimes it'll just be bad pixels that disappear after a frame; sometimes, your game will crash, and you lose the game by default. Is it worth the risk? Besides, you'll typically get more performance boost from a faster graphics card than faster RAM on the mobo.

Me, I'm doing scientific computing, so I'm even more demanding about reliability. I'm interested in OC because I want to get my results faster, but to be honest, the OCing is yielding only very small returns, because some of my working data sets fit into the L2 cache, making RAM speed irrelevant.
 
Hmmm ,well that's something else to think about. Time to do some more searching for good priced Crutial. I'll check if they are guaranteed to work with my m/b.
Thanks Tim

Cuiiey - best price I can find in Aust is shipped from the US on ebay....

So unfair how overcharged we get here....

Thanks again for the help guys!
 
Timothy Miller said:
You mention that you're using an MSI mobo. Anecdotally, MSI boards are kinda hit-or-miss with regard to various reliability issues. Specifically, my MSI board (X48 Platinum) is REALLY picky about memory. I couldn't get either OCZ Reapers or Kingston Value to work reliably. Even over-volting, stress tests would cause the system to crash very quickly.

Ultimately, I decided to buy Crucial, and that made a HUGE difference. Still, this being an MSI mobo, I found that I had to boost the voltage from 1.5v (these are DDR3 RAMs) to 1.54v. This is at the very least a characteristic of this MODEL of board, because I had MSI send me another one, and it was actually WORSE. Design flaw or being on the edge of tolerances. Anyhow, only Crucial has been 100% reliable. With both the OCZ and Kingston, my system was crashing all over the place.

Crucial does sell high-perf memories too, but I got the basic ones and then just did systematic testing to OC them. Crucial costs more, but it's worth it because they're so much more reliable. They also guarantee that the memory will work flawlessly with your board (if they've certified that, which they had with mine) or your money back. In my case, I would have saved a lot of money if I'd gone with Crucial to begin with, because I wouldn't have had to pay the restocking fee on the OCZ and also have some Kingstons sitting around useless.

I've built lots of systems and used memories from Crucial, Kingston, OCZ, Corsair, and several others. Only Crucial has worked flawlessly with all motherboards under all conditions. Memory is the the number one area where you should NOT go cheap.

Some people want to sacrifice reliability for performance. They think that they'll get a few more FPS in their online shoot'em'up game. The problem is that if you get a memory access fault, sometimes it'll just be bad pixels that disappear after a frame; sometimes, your game will crash, and you lose the game by default. Is it worth the risk? Besides, you'll typically get more performance boost from a faster graphics card than faster RAM on the mobo.

Me, I'm doing scientific computing, so I'm even more demanding about reliability. I'm interested in OC because I want to get my results faster, but to be honest, the OCing is yielding only very small returns, because some of my working data sets fit into the L2 cache, making RAM speed irrelevant.
Click to expand...

You did not mention Mushkin I have never had Issues with it have you?
 
When I got my MSI mobo and had trouble with it, I discussed it with friends who were professional system administrators and had between them built hundreds of PCs. According to them, some MSI boards have been great, and some haven't. Add to that my experience that MSI customer service is HORRIBLE. They don't return calls, and even when you do get in touch with them, there is no one knowledgeable to talk to, and they flatly refuse to do anything other than do RMA swaps to deal with problems.

Collectively, the professionals seem to recommend Tyan first. Abit and Asus have also gotten good recommendations. In the past, I've bought both and had good results.

BTW, check out the newegg reviews on the MSI X48 Platinum. Very poor reviews.
 
yeah my board doesn't have such great reviews either although it been everything desired for me.
On the msi page for my board it say its compatible with Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 1024MB but thats only the 2 gig kit not the 4.
I'm assuming that it wouldn't make much of a difference? That is only the xms2 kit thought not the dominators....
Are the dominators the same just with different heatsinks??
 
djlst said:
yeah my board doesn't have such great reviews either although it been everything desired for me.
On the msi page for my board it say its compatible with Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5 1024MB but thats only the 2 gig kit not the 4.
I'm assuming that it wouldn't make much of a difference? That is only the xms2 kit thought not the dominators....
Are the dominators the same just with different heatsinks??
Click to expand...

Four DIMMs vs. two seems to often make a difference. Pairs of them share a bus, which increases the loading and reflection characteristics on all the signal lines.
 
Commonly, the "performance" RAMs have been speed tested to meet some performance higher than standard, whereas the Value RAMs have just been tested to meet JEDEC standards.
 
Cheers Tim
Well considering I'm going to have to overclock to reach the 1066 and probably wont go much further.... maybe the xms2 is the way to go. With ddr3 becoming more common I doubt I will be using the ddr2 for my next system so dominators might be overkill for the current setup.
sold my old ram already so its crunch time very soon.
The xms2 is about 2/3's the price of dominators too and both are 1066mhz 5-5-5-15 at 2.1v
If anyone thinks this is a bad choice please speak now!!
Thanks again for all the help and advice guys!
 
Timothy Miller said:
Commonly, the "performance" RAMs have been speed tested to meet some performance higher than standard, whereas the Value RAMs have just been tested to meet JEDEC standards.
Click to expand...

You know this guy seems to have a good grasp on the subject even if I don't agree with all of his POV's. Not that I disagree with this one:)
 
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