New member/System

Hello everyone, new to the forum and overclocking. I had tried to make a post in general hardware but had no luck for some reason.

I decided to upgrade my current system:
Asus A8R32 MVP-Deluxe
2x1gig corsair xms DDR400 pc3200 2-2-2-5
AMD Opteron 175 2.2ghz
Sapphire X1900XTX
80GIG HD ?
Antec Trio 550W

I just ordered from egg:
Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe
AMD 64 X2 6400+ 3.2ghz
2gig(2x1gig) Corsair Dominator DDR800 PC6400 3-4-3-9
Raptor X 10k 150G
PC pwr & cooling 750 Quad single +12v @ 60A
2x BFG 8000GTX 768mb
Zalman 9700

This will be going into my current alienware case.

I was wondering if I should have ordered faster memory. The standard on my board as I am sure you know is DDR800. One of my reasons for not upgrading to the DDR1066 was because of the timings I saw 5-5-5-15. Would that ram have been considered better performance? the DDR1066 was actually $100 less than the DDR800. Anyhow , I feel I have put myself together a good system and will most likely be interested in mildly tweaking the performance on it. I still have to receive the parts and get the system together. Hopefully I cleared up any bottlenecks I might have had with my older system with this one.The HD in the old one was ancient

Thanks for all the help!
Chris

You could have simply run the 1066 memory at 800 and used tighter timings. The rating 1066 5-5-5-15 is the 'error-free' maximum stable speed the company will warranty.
I'm wondering why you paid more than $100 for your DDR800 anyway?!?! They are practically giving DDR2 away nowadays. I just bought some Corsair XMSPC8505 (DDR1066) for just over $100.

Well, the DDR2 800 dominator ram was $265.. I dont understand how 1066 ram ran at 800 with 5-5-5-15 ran at tighter timings could be better than 800 with 3-4-3-9 timings, probably due to my lack of hardware knowledge. Maybe I will return it for some better RAM that costs less? Not sure which one would be faster that would cost less and how to tweak it out. I wish I knew more about ram speed and timings. Here are 2 others that I found on the website.

Model OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
Brand OCZ
Series Gold
Model OCZ3G10662GK
Type 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Speed DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
Cas Latency 7
Timing 7-7-7-21
Voltage 1.6V
Heat Spreader Yes
Features Gold Layered Z3 XTC Heatspreader
1.8V EVP
Price $359.00

Model CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
Brand CORSAIR
Model TWIN3X2048-1066C7
Type 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Speed DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
Cas Latency 7
Timing 7-7-7-21
Heat Spreader Yes
Features Silver Heat Spreader
Manufacturer Warranty
Parts Lifetime limited
Labor Lifetime limited
Price $278.00

Maybe I should return my ram and go with one of these? The corsair is only $13 more than the DDR2800 I ordered. Once again, thank you for the help.

gist24 said:

Well, the DDR2 800 dominator ram was $265.. I dont understand how 1066 ram ran at 800 with 5-5-5-15 ran at tighter timings could be better than 800 with 3-4-3-9 timings, probably due to my lack of hardware knowledge. Maybe I will return it for some better RAM that costs less? Not sure which one would be faster that would cost less and how to tweak it out. I wish I knew more about ram speed and timings. Here are 2 others that I found on the website.

Model OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
Brand OCZ
Series Gold
Model OCZ3G10662GK
Type 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Speed DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
Cas Latency 7
Timing 7-7-7-21
Voltage 1.6V
Heat Spreader Yes
Features Gold Layered Z3 XTC Heatspreader
1.8V EVP
Price $359.00

Model CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
Brand CORSAIR
Model TWIN3X2048-1066C7
Type 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 2GB (2 x 1GB)
Speed DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
Cas Latency 7
Timing 7-7-7-21
Heat Spreader Yes
Features Silver Heat Spreader
Manufacturer Warranty
Parts Lifetime limited
Labor Lifetime limited
Price $278.00

Maybe I should return my ram and go with one of these? The corsair is only $13 more than the DDR2800 I ordered. Once again, thank you for the help.

Click to expand...

the mem you got is fine. pricey yes but will do good. the two you just posted are not compatible as they are ddr3 and amd has no ddr3 support as of yet

AMD systems generally can't exploit the DDR1066 fully .. The newest AM2+ (790FX chipset) motherboards can however, but they are a premium right now.

If you have DDR1066 ram @ 5-5-5-15 .. you could run them at DDR800 @ 4-4-4-12 or 3-3-3-8 or something similar (with reasearch, trial and error).
If you plan on overclocking, then you could run your DDR800 @ DDR1000 via overclock and loosen the stock timings to 4-4-4-12 or something. Again .. trial and error applies .. YMMV

I was just surprised that 2GB of DDR2 cost $265 .. you should be able to get a 4GB kit for that price.
IT's in CDN $ but here's an example DDR1066 and DDR1066 and 4GB DDR800

You might get that ram up to 4-4-4-12 or 13 at 900 possibly higher. The higher the frequency gets the better the bandwidth to the CPU. The CPU takes advantage of higher speeds to route data around the latencies. Speed trump latencies because the data gets there faster allowing more time for the latency cycle. I was better of running ram at DDR2-920 CL5 then DDR800 at CL4. On Phenom it may be differne but I guess we will find out when we get a few up and running.

Yeah, the 4gig that is available is:

Brand CORSAIR
Series Dominator
Model QUAD2X4096-8500C5DF
Type 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM
Tech Spec
Capacity 4GB(4 x 1GB)
Speed DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)
Cas Latency 5
Timing 5-5-5-15
Voltage 2.1V
Heat Spreader Yes
$337.00 with a $70 mail in rebate, putting it at $267. This is DDR2 1066 though.

Like I said in my earlier post, I would love to mildly tweak my system for a slight performance increase. I am not very familiar with ALL of the bios settings. The only thing I really know how to do is change mem timings, voltage, cpu voltage, fsb etc. I do not know all the formulas for HTT/FSB etc. When I get my parts in this week and get my system up and running, I will post the specs on here.

Thank You!

With that money you should of went with an Intel quad core. It would have given you much more for your money.

Your build is decent but its not very cost effective, if that matters.

I was thinking about going with a E6850 Core 2 duo but I was not happy with the selection of motherboards to choose from and the quad cores were a lot of money. It seems like AMD has a much wider variety of boards to choose from. I do not think any programs I use would utilize the quad core anyhow.

What would you consider a cost effective build? The ram and the cards were the heavy hitters. I am sure a more hardware savvy person could buy a lesser video card and tweak it out, as well as the ram. I could have probably saved about $500 but I have tried to cut corners in the past and ended up being unsatisfied with my purchase, and that is a bad feeling to have when you shell your hard earned money out.

Thanks again for the help!

You are going to love that system and you have a path to Phenom next year when the BIOS updates come out. ASUS might be ahead of most with early adoption of Phenom on pre-Phenom boards. I too steered away from Intel due to the boards. I would have loved to have gone with a dual xeon but the boards did nothing for me. I now see better 775 boards that before but things like SLI are only on a few boards and XFire support is almost nil cept for a few boards with older ATI chipsets.
Great choice in ram.

Very nice setup . I must say .

Well, all of my parts came in today and the build went smoothly. I ended up buying a cooler master cosmos case because I felt the cooling in my alienware wasnt sufficient and I wanted a bigger case.

Anyhow, my ram is DDR2 800 PC2 6400 2x1gig 3-4-3-9. The default setting in bios was 5-5-5-18 2T. I changed this once and it didnt post resulting in me having to reset the cmos to get into bios again. I think it was because I set
1T instead of 2T, I thought this ram was 1T though?? Any ideas? The voltage recommended is 2.4 but I have read about people having to RMA the ram with that setting. By the way, this 6400+ is a lot faster than my opteron 175 was. I will post more about it after I play some games with the new machine.

Thanks!

P.S. - This Zalmann 9700 cpu fan is WAY too big

I hate to say it but I am not noticing a difference gaming with (1) 8800 GTX vs (2) in SLI. I have seen the same performance in games.

gist24 said:

I hate to say it but I am not noticing a difference gaming with (1) 8800 GTX vs (2) in SLI. I have seen the same performance in games.

Click to expand...

a single 8800gtx can run most anything at maxed settings. unless you are using a widescreen monitor and playing games at resolutions above 1680 x 1050.. then there really isn't a noticeable increase getting a 2nd one. it will however score you more points in a benchmark program like 3dmark 06

Run that ram on 2T above 600 is pushing it for 1T. That's not to say some ram can't handle it but in general we leave it at 2T. You may also find it better to run CL4 and oc the RAM over tighter lats. If you can get them to 960 on CL4 that would be a great clock!

Well, one of my dominator sticks went bad so I decided to ditch the Corsair for a refund after reading all the bad experiences people have been having with that particular set.

I replaced them with some Mushkin XP2 4g (2x2g) DDR2800 PC6400 [email protected].

gist24 said:

Well, one of my dominator sticks went bad so I decided to ditch the Corsair for a refund after reading all the bad experiences people have been having with that particular set.

I replaced them with some Mushkin XP2 4g (2x2g) DDR2800 PC6400 [email protected].

Click to expand...

wow where do u get all this money? thats some nice ram. have you run a 3Dmark yet on your system?

Yes I have. The highest score I have gotten was 12,600 in SLI with the dominators . I installed the new ram and ran a 10600 then a 11500 right after ??? that puzzles me, these 2 scores were with a single GTX vs the higher one with SLI. My scores might be a little low due to drivers possibly. I hear this ram is great for overclocking but I have no idea where to begin on that.. I think I have a virus or a driver corruption somewhere. I am going to do a format tomorrow with a fresh install and then run 3dmark06. My bios is probably 99% defaults, I do not know how to play with the settings in there.. I have an aftermarket zalmann on my CPU and the processor seems to run in the 34C'ish idle range if I remember correctly.

Is there a way to post my bios settings on here so maybe I could get a little help with optimization? My ram is set at 4-3-3-10 2T @ 2.25V and processor voltage at 1.4. I know how to play with the FSB and multiplier but not the steps to take while overclocking.

Thank You,
Chris

Thanks for the link. I am going to play around with this later. The AMD CALC link does not work though.