RAM FSB Question

[Poci]

Id go for tight timings over frequency any day

[Meridian]

Got some benchmark figures to support that though? Apart from Sandra memory bandwidth? And it makes a small difference to SuperPI. I find for most other benches it makes no difference what you set the RAM to: you can drop the speed 25% and it's still the same overall performance. The CPU is the bottleneck on modern systems, not the RAM. RAM settings are for bragging rights, and that's about it. I'll admit it's a couple of years since I last tried it (with my i920 soon after I got it), but I've not heard differently.


M

[TheGlasMan]

Personally, I don't think there is much if any difference as the big caches we have now cover most things. If you have big memory apps I would go towards frequency, as timings basically only effect the initial addressing, EDO after that. For gaming it would lean towards timings. I wouldn't compromise stability at all to get either to an extreme. Since the 486 days (and before most likely) timing has always been stressed by magazines, but have always had a minimal effect (within margin of error) on app benchmarks. And nowadays the cpu has more cache then those machines had memory. Current tests show the same thing. For a max out superPi run I would have the timings as tight as possible as it is important there, but overall it doesn't matter.
Memory frequency and FSB was important to P4 and quad c2d's because the FSB was crowded, but not now for Intel, and not for AMD since K8.

[rocca1290]

So I'm a little disappointed and frustrated with the seemingly horrible overclocking abilities of my computer. I just spent freaking 185 bucks on some better cooling equipment and I still can't get this thing pushed any further. I got a stable overclock at 3.4 gHz and cant seem to get it to go any further, even when bumping down the RAM speed. I've tried everything and the freaking CPU is already at max voltage 1.3625. Any suggestions? Or am I just asking to much to push the thing higher than 2.6 to 3.4?

Not to mention the video card, I barely touch the damn settings in afterburner and benchmarking apps crash.

[Hardware]

So I'm a little disappointed and frustrated with the seemingly horrible overclocking abilities of my computer. I just spent freaking 185 bucks on some better cooling equipment and I still can't get this thing pushed any further. I got a stable overclock at 3.4 gHz and cant seem to get it to go any further, even when bumping down the RAM speed. I've tried everything and the freaking CPU is already at max voltage 1.3625. Any suggestions? Or am I just asking to much to push the thing higher than 2.6 to 3.4?

Not to mention the video card, I barely touch the damn settings in afterburner and benchmarking apps crash.

I doubt the board is at fault. You don't seem to have a handle on the basics.

Let me explain:

True System bus speed= CPU FSB /4
i.e. 1333/4=333MHz

True RAM speed= RAM MHz/2
i.e. 1600/2=800MHz

So at stock speeds your RAM is running much faster than your System bus speed. That is fine. It means you have plenty of overclocking room. What you can do is increase your system bus speed from 333MHz all the way up to 800MHz without having to overclock your RAM. So why haven't you been able to do that? Most likely because you are making mistakes in the BIOS settings. I suggest going over the mobo manual once again.

[TheGlasMan]

Memory speed goes up with FSB, so to overclock the cpu you have to start by underclocking the memory, which will increase with FSB till it gets to it's limit. T listed speed is really a multi of the bus speed.

I always lower memory speed a lot tilll I know what the cpu can do then use the appropriate memory multi to raise the speed up to what the memory can do.

CPU speed is king, memory stuff is less important.

[pingupenguins]

Wow great thread. Learned a lot!