I'm thinking if tightening my RAM timings...Should I do this to my "cheapo" brand ram

I'm thinking if tightening my RAM timings...Should I do this to my "cheapo" brand ram

Yeah, I fell for the cheaper brand ram when I was building my computer and now I want to squeeze the most I can get out of it. It's just a generic peice of pc2700 ram. This is what the stock timings are...

2.5 - 3 - 3 - 7

I just changed one of the figures last night and haven't found any instability problems yet and I was running prime95 right now to test out my new CPU overclock. (166x13 if anyone is interested. 2500+ barton) My new figures as of last night are...

2 - 3 - 3 - 7

I'm wondering which ones I should try to change first and how I can get the best preformance from this stick. I'm guessing if I find instability, I can just give it a little more juice, but how much should I add? Or can I even do that? If things are going to be running hotter, would I need to buy a copper heatspreader (vantec)? thanks!

Oh yeah, by the way. I can not overclock my speed of the ram because of my motherboard and that is why I'm just tightning.

What board are you using? If its a NF2 board you could put that 7 back to 11, performance will probably improve. If not it wont get much worse. Try 2 2 2 11. If its unstable add some more volts. Without knowing what chips are on the ram I would probably only go to 2.9 volts. Wouldnt really worry about heat, touch it while its running and see how hot it really is. Run memtest86 + prime95 to check for stability.

Oh yeah... heh n_n;; I have an Asus A7V8X-X mobo with a VIA (KT400 or KT333...can't remember) chipset

If you want to see how tight timings will go, take it in steps followed by consistant stablity testing.

Focus on one timing at a time, going from the most stressful (tRCD - RAS-to-CAS Delay) to the least (tRAS). If your computer doesn't boot up, reset bios and start again. Increase vDIMM voltage and check if system boots again. If system doesn't boot up with highest allowed vDIMM setting, then back off timing and try something else.

Ex. Reduce tRCD from 3 to 2, then run a quick test of Memtest86+ (Running only tests #0-3 & #5 is a quick test.) to check for stablity. If you get errors, then increase vDIMM voltage and run Memtest86+ again. If your at the highest allowed voltage and still can't run it stabily, then back off the timing and try another.

When your done, run a full looped (overnight) run of Memtest86+ to make sure your system is entirely stable.

This same process works with increasing memory speed (in 5MHz increments).

I took your advice and I've been running 2 - 2 - 2 - 7 flawlessly for about 3 hours. tonight I'll run it all night to see if it is still stable after a lot more hours. Thanks

Oh yeah. Do I want to change my 7 to a 6 or would that do nothing for me? Another side note is that my ram is perfectly cool becase I just recently installed a 120mm fan right above them...it was meant more for the processor, but it ended up more over the ram...still cools the proc great. I have not changed my voltages either and they are still running great. thanks.

If it does 2-2-2-7 then I don't think 2-2-2-6 would be a problem,
since even the more conservative estimate for tRAS is tCL+tRCD+2 which in this case would be 2+2+2=6.
Even 2-2-2-5 might work.

In any case decreasing tRAS is unlikely to gove you boot problems, but might give stability problems.
So it should be safe to try it as long sa you check stability.

EDIT: Just realized your on AMD so 2-2-2-5/6 might not give you best performance, consider earlier comments from people who know about AMD, I don't.

Br
hepp