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More speed or more RAM but same kind....

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NDX_WARLORD

Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2003
Location
Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada
If you have a look at my signature you will get a basic idea of my problem. I got another 2 sticks of 512MB RAM DDR500 to have smooth Battlefield 2 play, however I was unable to boot at my overclocked speeds that I had before. I had to cut it DRAMATICALLY. Please let me know if I can still run it at high speeds or what's the problem? Should I have gone with 2 sticks of 1GB or it doesn't matter?

All help is appreciated :)
 
Well it sounds to me that you obviously have a weak stick of memory. I would figure out which one is the one that doesnt like the high clock speeds and then stick with 1 gig until you can afford a pair of dual channel memory in the dual 1gig flavor.
 
With 4 sticks of RAM your chances of all of them doing the same speeds is < your chances of two sticks doing the same speeds as no two sticks are the same. In the past 2 sticks of 512 had a better chance of overclocking higher than 2 sticks of 1 gig, but these days things have more or less evened out.

My advice to you would be to try each stick individually, and record the maximum stable overclock of each, and then see for yourself which in fact are the limiting sticks. With 4 sticks there could be a possibility that your PSU isn't providing enough power to power all of them that high, and stable. There is no loss in giving this a try as you will then be able to keep 2 of the best performing sticks anyways if u decide to get 2 new sticks.


Raven


EDIT: Here is another thread referring to the 4*512 or 2*1028 question.

And here is one more.
 
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I already bought the 3rd and 4th sticks, I'm just having this problem now. Do you guys think my current PSU could be the problem or it's definetly one of the sticks of RAM? All info is my my sig, feel free to ask for more detail.

Also before I went to sleep I set it at 2.7Ghz CPU and 450Mhz 2.5-3-3-6-8-12 and ran %3000 check on the RAM flawlessly which was about 9 or 10 hours. Right now I'm using Prime95 to check the FFT torture test results. Do you think it's worth it to have 100Mhz and 1GB of RAM more but 70Mhz lower RAM speed but at same clocks of RAM except the T1 is now T2?
 
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The first time I run Prime95 I got the blue screen of death and it dumped the memory, but now I've been running it for over an hour and it's been fine. Let's see how long before I get any errors. Also before I ran it again, I played Battlefield 2 for hours and hours and did my normal tasks like forums and email, etc. without any problems at all, and I did notice a HUGE difference in playing BF2 now :D I used to be nearly last into the game after loading for a laggy *** long time and I'd have many jolts and choppiness during the game that are gone now. I guess I've finally found 1 process that I would need more than 1GB of RAM for xD

Anyway I still cant help but feel that the sacrafice of 1.45GBps of memory bandwidth/70Mhz of DDR speed is still a big loss. I think I'll test the RAM with 1 of my old sticks and one of the new sticks with both new ones and see if they both boot at 520Mhz DDR, and if so, then possibly it's the PSU. If that's the case, do you think it would be a good idea to power my case fans and anything that's not directly linked to the main board, to a different PSU? Because I have a 300W and a 250W PSU just sitting around doing jack crap. If after I do all these tedious tasks I still have problems, what do you guys think I should do?
 
before blaming the PSU, i'd check the RAM THOUROUGHLY.

Do you have another computer around to test the RAM in to see if it is bugged or not?

After all that, then if you can find space in your case for a 2ndary PSU, then go for it! It'll reduce the load off the main one a lot just by running say... the Optical drives, Case Fans, and HD's off the 2ndary.
 
Well after testing my 2 new RAM sticks, I've concluded they they both can't run at high speeds, not even 500Mhz, which is what they're designed for. I will go return them tommorow and either replace them with 2 sticks of DDR 500 RAM or maybe I'll try and get 2x1GB of RAM :)

What do you guys think? I'm not sure if I can get the 2x1GB but if I can't, do you think it's possible to run 4 sticks at 500 Mhz or higher?
 
Yes, it is possible to run 4 sticks at DDR500 (500 / 2 = 250MHz) speeds. If that is what the sticks are rated to do. I have just been reading at XS that unfortunately, not all motherboards can support the use of 4 x 512 at DDR500 as it requires a lot more juice and apparently they say that the signal quality when using 4 x 512 at those speeds isn't the greatest either. But you could always try lowering the timings to help things out. Running 4 x 512 at DDR500 would put a lot of stress on the 3.3 rail of the PSU as well, so you might have to adjust the input if your PSU allows it. It was unfortunate that you got two bad sticks, but chances are, that won't happen the next time. Hope you find what you are looking for!

Threads at XS can be found HERE and HERE for more information.
 
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According to that second HERE link, I just need more voltage, since my RAM voltage is at 3.0 and my Vcore is at 1.5375 and my HTT is at 1.25 and my chipset at 1.6 if I remember all correctly. He has them all running at my old speed (2x260Mhz) with V3.34 If I raised it, which I don't know how to do other than BIOS which is maxed at 3.0, do you think it would work?
 
You have to remember that he is using BH-5 chips which LOVE voltage (BH-5 chips are very rare, and were discontinued a while ago), and since your board maxes out at 3, you would either have to do a volt mod, or maybe use an OCZ DDR booster, but in this case since you have all 4 slots taken up, and a DDR booster goes into one slot, you are forced to do a volt mod. I am not too familiar with your board, but when I get time later tonight, I will see if I can find any tutorials about volt modding. You should also read the stickies in the memory section, and the Voltage Modding section. You might find some useful information there.

So in the end, it would be better to use 2 x 1 gig memory modules, or settle for a lower overclock with 4 x 512. You could probably sell off your old 2 * 512 and put that money towards 2 sticks of 1 gig.
 
GOOD NEWS! I Sold my old Kingmax 4 sticks for $405 and bought 2 sticks of OCZ Platinum 1GB PC3200 for $37.5 cheaper, and they perform MUCH better! :D Look at my sig. I had to lower my CPU 200Mhz but I nearly have the same performance I had with 1GB of RAM but now with 2GB, I guess I just need to burn them in a little bit and hopefully get back to 2.6 or 2.7Ghz with 500+Mhz DDR again :D

Thanks everyone for your advice, I GREATLY appreciate it :)
 
Glad to hear that you got yourself the pair of gig sticks, you saved money, and were able to achieve approximately the same performance! Lets us know how things turn out with your burning in as I am interested to see how these sticks perform! What Vdimm to you have these running at right now?
Also, just remember to keep the air in your case nice and flowing =) If it doesnt help you with your overclock, it should atleast help with the life of your sticks by keeping them cool.
 
I have the Vdimm I guess at 3.0, I always keep it at my BIOS's max just to make sure that it's not the bottle neck for my performance. Anyway I updated my sig :) It's quite stable at 2.7Ghz and 450Mhz RAM with tight clocks hitting bandwidth of 6.45GBps :) I haven't memtested it or Prime95 on it yet, but in my eager hurry to get back to Battlefield 2, I just played with it as it is before testing and it ran the game flawlessly for hours :D I'll start testing now :)
 
Very nice! Congrats. :clap:

Now I'm just curious. Are those the tightest timings you can get? I want to see how far these OCZ sticks can be pushed =)
 
Well then, glad to see that it is all in working order!
Enjoy smoother Battlefield 2 play! :cool:
 
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