Noob Question (Sorry!)

mossmotorsport

mossmotorsport

mossmotorsport

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Hi all, bought myself an Asus P5Q motherboard with 2 sticks of the Kington Hyper X thats on offer. Now I have that running in dual channel which seems to be ok (not as fast I had hoped for - and also only a 5.5 vista rating), but my question is - I have one stick of 2GB DDR2 667 PC-5300-555-12 RAM knocking about. I put it in the system and it worked and recognised it as having 6GB of RAM total, but is this going to slow the PC down - as its no longer running dual channel?

Also does anyone have their Hyper X RAM show up as 5.5 within vista - when my older RAM showed up as 5.9? Strange.... Thanks in advance!
 
Vista takes into account the speed and amount of RAM and calculated bandwidth. If you bought the 1066MHz Kingston, have you checked in your bios its running at that speed and not 800MHz which it may default to.

As far as I know, running three sticks of RAM would be triple channel, four sticks quad channel.
 
Thanks for the replies!

I have run CPUZ as I cant seem to get hold of a good version of PC Mark ;) The screenshot for CPUZ is below - but I dont understand it too well. But im guessing the DRAM frequency is running too low:

screen1.jpg


screen2.jpg
 
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What voltage are you running your RAM at? According to your CPU-Z sreenshot it's 1.8v (check in your BIOS to be sure, I'm betting it's set to auto). According to the specs of that RAM "Each module pair has been tested to run at DDR2- 1066MHz at a latency timing of 5-5-5-15 at 2.2V. The SPD is programmed to JEDEC standard latency 800Mhz timing of 5-5-5-18 at 1.8V."

Hence you need to set your BIOS to manually set the RAM v to 2.2

Now you should see the full speed in CPU-Z.

All RAM has a default 'safe' value (SPD) so as to allow it to run effectively underclocked, but it means greater compatibility with a wide range of mobo's and fewer complaints etc.:)


edit:You might be better to run at 2.1v first and if only running one pair of this RAM, maybe 2.2v needed to get it stable when using 2 pairs. Check the reviews on the product page as loads of people there have posted their voltages, speeds, and latencies.
 
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The BIOS should have set the RAM to Auto at 800MHz, as that's the maximum JEDEC standard.

You'll need to overclock the RAM (although not really overclock as it's the stated speed) in the BIOS to bump it up to it's stated running speed.
Same with my old OCZ 1066MHz RAM and my current Corsair Dominator 1066MHz, they both Auto-ed to 800MHz, but you just bump them up to 1066MHz, adjust the voltage to what it wants, and bob's your uncle. :)


Edit: Also the Vista rating means next to diddlysquat. :p
 
Thanks very much for the replies, I will have a play around with the voltages later on. I am using 2x new hyper x sticks and 2 x 1gb older 5300 RAM now just to give me 6GB RAM which may make things even quicker, we shall have to see. Thanks again though.
 
To be honest, I've rarely noticed any gaines from using the 4:5 ratio over 1:1. Intels FSB design with the memory controller in the north bridge, just moves the bottleneck from the memory controller, to the frontside bus. Except with the new i7's faster ram is faster period, no FSB to bottleneck it.

Running async to the CPU just means the timings are never quite "standard" they fluctuate depending where in the clock's go in and out of sync with each other.

In theory, as the FSB is 1066 (well 1333 in your overclocked system), if you could get DDR that was running at 667mhz (DDR2-1333), then the memory interface would be in perfect clock sync with the CPU, it would have advantages in terms of latency on small transfers, but on large transfers it would still just end up bottlenecked on the frontside bus. Its beside the point as nobody makes DDR2 PC10666.

High speed ram is only really benificial for insanely high overclocks. My system is fastest with the CPU clocked higher, even though it means dropping my memory clocks below their rated values (although I do get to run it with nice tight timings, 4-4-4-4 @ 533 gives almost the same overall latency as 5-5-5-5 @ 667.)
 
mossmotorsport said:
Thanks very much for the replies, I will have a play around with the voltages later on. I am using 2x new hyper x sticks and 2 x 1gb older 5300 RAM now just to give me 6GB RAM which may make things even quicker, we shall have to see. Thanks again though.
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you will never get 1066 using the old 5300 memory. Better off taking out the 5300 and run the hyperx in dual mode as it's intended to be, it will be faster than with the old stuff in.
 
The Deuce said:
you will never get 1066 using the old 5300 memory. Better off taking out the 5300 and run the hyperx in dual mode as it's intended to be, it will be faster than with the old stuff in.
Click to expand...

This.

Didn't notice that you'd mixed RAM speeds.

If you set the new RAM to their proper 1066MHz speed, the old ones will be seriously overclocked and most likely burn themselves out (or whatever RAM does when it dies).

If I were in your shoes, I'd take out the old, and keep the new at the higher speed.
 
I have attached screenshots of my bios settings, and a cpuz readout. You can see I have changed the voltage to 2.2v and the speed to 1066 in the bios, however cpuz still only reads 1.8v? It must be something really simple - surely?

P1000195.jpg


P1000196-1.jpg


P1000197.jpg


P1000198.jpg


P1000199-1.jpg


screen4.jpg
 
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