Noob question to overclocking RAM

[Notorious Lee]

Hi guys,

I have a few questions but first let me give you a very brief background.

For a while I have been running 2 x 1GB sticks of Corsair PC-6400 RAM with timing's of 4-4-4-12 & voltage of 2.1v.

Now, I have purchased 2 x 2GB sticks of the same memory with same timings & installed them of which Vista is now showing I am using 6GB of RAM in dual channel mode.

Pretty straight forward.

Now originally my RAM was letting my Vista score down as all my components are getting a 5.9 score but my RAM was getting 5.0 of which I pretty much know the bottleneck lies at the RAM because I am only using 800MHz sticks & my processor bus speed is 1066MHz.

However, since I installed the extra 4GB my RAM is now scoring 5.3 (slight improvement).

The reason I puchased the PC-6400 RAM is due to me reading posts on here with a lot of people stating it's a waste of money paying the extra for PC-8500 RAM because PC-6400 can be overclocked which leads me onto my question.

I am a complete beginner when it comes to overclocking but I want to squeeze a little extra out of my RAM bearing in mind I just have air cooling so can someone please offer any advice as to how I would go about this for example do I just increase the memory speed in BIOS or do I have to up the voltage as well, etc?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Notorious Lee]

But surely if I increase my RAM speed bandwidth from 800MHz & lets say for arguments sake to as close as 1066MHz then that will reduce the bottleneck improving peformance.

I agree it may only slightly improve but I would to get the most out of it.

Also, when your talking about ratio what do you mean.

Sorry if it's a dumb question.

 

[Notorious Lee]

Hi Cob,

If this is the case then why is Vista only scoring my memory @ 5.3 even though I have increased the amount of memory by 4GB?

Also, what software would you recommend for testing memory & other components bearing in mind I am using Vista 64 bit?

I also want to test for temps.