Confirm my thinking..

Count Stex · 14 Feb 2007 at 13:00

OK, I'm going to sounds a bit nooby here probably, but want to check my thinking..

I currently run an Athlon 64 3700+ with some PC3200 RAM, as that is the highest stated RAM spec for my ASRock board. However I have a fairly tasty overclock on the FSB (For the stock cooler anyway), as you will see in the sig, which requires me to rein in the RAM else I can't boot (Run it set to 333 in BIOS as this results in near 400 in reality)

Am I right in thinking obtaining some higher rated sticks of RAM would allow me to unleash more of the FSB to the RAM, or are there other factors invilved that would prevent my from running higher rated RAM in my mobo?

Minstadave · 14 Feb 2007 at 14:58

A64 doesn't require a huge amount of RAM bandwidth to perform well, CPU speed is everything. You'd see little benefit in upgrading to expensive (especially now DDR is dying a slow death) RAM.

I used to really push DDR on my A64 system, but found running with the highest CPU clock and the memory on a divider and clocked slightly above PC3200 speeds worked perfectly and was a lot less hassle.

Count Stex · 14 Feb 2007 at 16:39

Hadn't noticed how expensive they where until i went looking after posting!! Guess I'll see what else I can tweak out of the FSB with a larger divider

Count Stex · 14 Feb 2007 at 20:35

Cheers for the tips, I'm now running with the following setup:

Any more and I get random reboots, temps are fine, guess it's a lack of volts, but it's maxed out in BIOS.

Minstadave · 14 Feb 2007 at 20:59

Try tightening tRCD and tRP to 3, they're both at 5 which is sloooow

Are you running 4x512mb?

Defcon5 · 14 Feb 2007 at 21:08

Aaargh! must.. lower... timings... set.... command... rate... 1...

Sorry, it just have a thing about ram timings.

A64s respond well to low latencies, so get them as low as you can, if its budget ram 2.5-3-2-6 would be a good target

Count Stex · 14 Feb 2007 at 21:59

I am running with 4x512 and I just loosened all the timing to eliminate any instability they would bring to the new clock.. I'll get on the tightening now

Although, even without a clock I can't take 1T.. just fails to POST using Crucial Value Selects

Minstadave · 14 Feb 2007 at 22:31

Count Stex said:
Although, even without a clock I can't take 1T.. just fails to POST using Crucial Value Selects

4x512mb won't run at 1T on any A64 system (apart from the ATI DFI board, which was tampered with by Oskar Wu).

Defcon5 · 14 Feb 2007 at 22:38

Minstadave said:
apart from the ATI DFI board, which was tampered with by Oskar Wu.

How did they do that? did they make it do the cpu thought there were only 2 banks?

Count Stex · 14 Feb 2007 at 22:38

I think I have that info in the back of my brain somewhere, which might be why i left it alone

Count Stex · 14 Feb 2007 at 23:52

OK, gotten tighter.. seems stable in Windows and with a Pi test.. not tried any games or the like yet however.. seems to be a bit over the top from where I was so I'm expecting problems.. the reduction to 2CAS in paticualr seems a bit cheeky..

allllec · 15 Feb 2007 at 00:12

Try knocking your multi to 10.5 and pushing the fsb so you achive the same final clock speed on the cpu but this in turn will push the ram a bit further.. assuming the Ram can go >200mhz

Count Stex · 15 Feb 2007 at 00:19

I've not unlocked my multiplier

allllec · 15 Feb 2007 at 00:21

should be able to move it downwards.. assume motherboard is not capable of it

o well mate - its not that important

good luck with the overclock dude

ta

alec

Minstadave · 15 Feb 2007 at 00:21

Defcon5 said:
How did they do that? did they make it do the cpu thought there were only 2 banks?

I'm not sure how effective it was, Oskar Wu did some BIOS tinkering and got it working.

Count Stex · 15 Feb 2007 at 00:25

allllec said:
should be able to move it downwards.. assume motherboard is not capable of it o well mate - its not that important

good luck with the overclock dude

ta

alec

Well the options are certainly there, but I'm sure I tried once and it ignored me.. will try again though just to be certain.

Count Stex · 15 Feb 2007 at 00:54

It would seem my aging memory is playing tricks on me! I can indeed lower the multiplier, although only in whole steps.. so I've dropped to 10 and will see what I can do, thanks for the nudge!

Count Stex · 15 Feb 2007 at 09:12

Well, I was able to boot with 270 on the FSB, however it rebooted the moment it hit Windows. Dropped this to 266 and could get in long enough to take a screen shot, but Opera then started reporting errors and eventually the OS locked. Continued to drop to around 258 but was still unstable, so I figured it was better to stick with 11x and 200Mhz on the RAM.
I'm presuming the problem is mainly going to be the heat in the RAM chips, perhaps a spot fan would allow me to make these higher speeds stable?
Or maybe I should put the CAS back to the registered 2.5?? Of course it could be I'm just asking too much of my budget sticks.

I've gone back to my 250Mhz @ 11x for now, and left it running folding@home today to see if the tightened timings can hold out.

Jleo · 15 Feb 2007 at 10:04

It would be nice to see a completed Super pi, you are only doing some loops out of 24 for 32M calculation, no final result

Count Stex · 15 Feb 2007 at 10:28

I get impatient and take the shot before it completes

I'llpost a comleted run tonight.