i7 upgraded DDR3 but no faster ?

digitaldreams · 10 Jun 2009 at 21:55

i7 upgraded DDR3 sticks but no faster ?

i7 965 CPU
Asus p6T WS Pro Motherboard
Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D Ram (8-8-8-24)
Basic Bios settings, no overclock.

Memtest 86+ gave 17431 MB/s, great !

Read a recent article on Toms Hardware where they tested PC3-16000 (2GHz) modules. Noted that the results for most at 1.6GHz were an even more impressive 27240....so baught the 2GHz OCZ blade set to get the most from 1.6GHz.

Memtest 86+ gave 17431 MB/s, what !

Timings had been manually set at 6-6-7-16 as in the article & CPUz confirmed this plus the correct DRAM frequency of around 800MHz (1600).

Any clues ?. I must be missing something here as the timings alone are much better (e.g. CAS 8 down to 6).

Regards

digitaldreams · 11 Jun 2009 at 22:08

Not the point !

I'm missing something if for the first time I experience no improvement in memory bandwith by decreasing CAS !. I'm talking of many years of experience.

There must be a bios setting that's throttling/overriding my settings....the bios does seem to confusingly have many more settings than my old 775 socket board.

Regards

digitaldreams · 12 Jun 2009 at 22:35

Well

Tried both sets again @1600, this time with Everest and Sandra benchmarks.

Both Everest and Sandra showed a 'slight' improvement (Everest giving different readings each time it was run, Sandra more stable)

So back to the latest Memtest 86+ & the Blade set. I can't accept that the bandwidth doesn't change with CAS, it has on all my previous rigs. So I pushed it wider, 9-9-9-24 (auto in bios), lo and behold Memtest showed a poorer 15722 MB/s. So it DOES change. So why does it seem to hit a limit of 17431 @ CAS 8 & 6 ??

Regards

digitaldreams · 13 Jun 2009 at 10:51

Thanks Big Wayne...

Might try overclocking the ram interface next, tho I demand uber stability at all times.

For those wondering why I bother with all this....I'm currently an IT engineer

, used to design & build electronic/computer systems from the bare components up for the aerospace industry (miss that badly). Yup, if a processor was involved I had to program the end result in machine code too. Hence I'm a bit of a perfectionist and twiddler to boot. I also run some demanding ray tracing, taking all day to produce the end result, so an hour or two saved is worthwhile....

Regards