DRAM Frequency 1:1 or 3:5?

[hellothere11]

Greetings, I am looking for answers to a 1:1 ratio vs 3:5. I am just wondering what route would be best to take and if the 1:1 ratio even matters at all (I've read all around google and pretty much one person says it matters but another would say the opposite and so on... So a solid clarification would be much appreciated).

Anyway, heres what I'm mainly trying to find out:

I'm running my ram underclocked at 800mhz (6-6-6-16) to make a 1:1 ratio with my CPU (400mhz). I could raise my ram to its rated 1333mhz (9-9-9-24) but it will make the ratio 3:5. What would be the better choice, what would you guys choose?

Also I would like to believe that loosening the timings to 9-9-9-24 from
6-6-6-16 would in fact have a drawback of a performance gain going 800mhz to 1333mhz, since i read that timings have more of an effect than speed, but I'm probabley wrong.

Thanks in advance guys!

 

[redduc900]

Opinions will vary, so why not just run a couple of performance benches to see for yourself which is faster, DDR2-800 1:1 at 6-6-6-16 vs DDR3-1333 3:5 and 9-9-9-24?

 

[hellothere11]

Thanks for the reply!

Found and ran 'MaxxMem2' and it turns out running at 1333 with 9-9-9-24 timings is actually quite better than 800 6-6-6-16 in all aspects.

I guess the only thing I am curious about is the 3:5 ratio, should I just not even worry about the ratio then (Bottlenecks, stabilty, etc)?

 

[redduc900]

The 3:5 FSB : DRAM ratio isn't anything to worry about, considering it's a divider specific to the 400 MCH / NB strap. You could also try tighter NB latencies by changing the strap to 333, along w/ changing the divider to 1:2, which also results in an effective DRAM frequency of DDR3-1333 at a FSB of 400MHz. Dependent on the quality of the board / MCH (NB) and RAM, those factors will determine whether or not your system can run stably on that strap.