Please help and advise a noob

Paul_Robson

Paul_Robson

Paul_Robson

Associate
Joined
26 May 2005
Posts
267
Location
Wallasey
Hi , i got myself an AMD opteron 165 cpu, and i had 2 * 512 megs of corsair 3200 xms pro memory. I got my cpu to 2.7ghz(good stepping chip), and then i bought 2 gig of corsair 3500LL pro memory.Now i can only clock my cpu to 2.5 ghz.My motherboard is an Asus A8n32 SLI-Deluxe, and my pc is aired cooled. I want to get back to 2.7 ghz, but this memory i got wont let me.Any advise please. Bare in mind that im crap at overclocking and the correct terminology.Oh, and thankyou for any help that you can give me, cheers.
 
Last edited:
Put the RAM on a divider, tighten the timings, and run it 'slower' than the cpu. It makes no difference to the overall speed of the A64 system.
 
Okay, bare with me, coz i only have a little amount of knowledge of this stuff.I have put the ram from 200 mhz down to 166 mhz, as for tighten the timing, i wouldnt know how to do that.I ran Everest to benchmark my pc, and i was getting 7373 score on memory read now i only get 5500, which is a big drop. I know its all down to tuning this memory, im just no good at this stuff. Any more suggestions and thankyou for your help and patience.
 
You tested the ram with memtest? Make sure it's not faulty ram, corsair are good but i have had a few faulty sets from them before. Maybe they just get damaged in the post, its worth checking though. Memtest is fairly easy to use download it for free make a cd boot disk and just boot it up from disk it will find any faults with you ram. If it is faulty contact corsair and they will sort you out.
 
Thanks for the advise. But if my memory was faulty, wouldnt it not boot the pc.Does some memory clocked better than other memory regarding chips and steepings. I hope this memory aint fault, i got it off ebay :(
 
i may be wrong about this but the memory you have bought, 3500LL could well be BH-5, which although it should do tight timings (2-2-2-6) all the way to ~250mhz, once you slacken the timings, it will probably still only scale upto ~270mhz, whereas as you said your old 3200 scaled very high, you probably had samsung tccd before, which although it needs looser timings, can probably scale to ~300mhz, so maybe your new memory just wont scale as high at 1:1, that all goes out the window however, if you have set the divider to less than 1:1 and its still not reaching the same potential.
you should try googling memtest, its a program that lets you test your memory for errors at whatever speed you set in BIOS, so you can test if it is infact your new memory now holding you back (note: you need to set your cpu multiplier low, IE 6*, so when you are running the tests you can be confident it wont crash out from OCing too high)
 
Thanks mikey, i just ran memtest and it says i have no errors. I ran it for 35 mins, till the full test was complete.I find it odd that i could overclock my 165 opti to 2.7ghz (300*9), yet with this memory in my cpu will only get to 2.5ghz(280*9).Really frustrated now :(
 
have you checked the ht multiplier is set to 4*? might have been reset to 5* at some point causing your current lower maximum OC, although tbh i would have thought it would have flaked out before now if it was still set to 5*. also you should try 8* multiplier, just to make sure it is the memory holding you back. finally you havent updated the BIOS since your last set of memory have you? sometimes a new bios can limit an OC, tbh soo many things could affect your OC you really need to ensure absolutely everything apart from the memory is in the same condition as your previous more successful OC
 
you may even need to drop the htt multi down to 3, as 280x4 = 1120, which is above the 1000 'rule' although this may not be the issue, its worth a try
 
Thx for your advise guys. I have not updated the bios on my board, even though i have the 1303 bios, thats the latest one, its been out for ages, but i know what you mean.I have put the htt on 3.I have not changed anything in my pc, only the memory.And now i just cant overclock and get back to 2.7ghz. I will fiddle and hopefully try to get back here. Think im going to get rid of this 2 gig corsaor and put my 1 gig back in :(
 
I put the multiplier on 8, and put the fsb to 290, pc would not boot.The htt is on 3, as long as i picked the right option, it gives me auto,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 so i picked 3.Im thinking its this memory, its just rubbish.Getting ready to put my 1 gig back in :(
 
Erms, thing is dude, its not as if your loosing a lot on the clock speed of the CPU, and then you'll also have the extra RAM, which is also a bonus, depends if your bothered about synthetic benchmark results or not, or actualy performance.

Anyone else shed some light on the above? With the extra RAM he can have higher res textures etc n yada yada yad in games due to the extra memory, but then again the extra memory will naturally make the workload for textures and things a lot less.
 
You probably need to loosen the timings when running on the 166 divider. The 3500LL is rated to run at 218Mhz @2-3-2-6. You're trying to run them at 232Mhz. Try 3-3-3-8 and see if they work. If they do then lower the timings one at a time to find the sweet spot.
 
Okay, both points taken. Now i know this may seem really dumb, so please humour me, but my downfall here is not knowing anything about memory timings. I know hwere the options are, but how do i alter them. As to my games, i know i play heavy games like fear,farcry and (dont laugh) quake 1. I have a nvidia 7800GTX BFG, so all my games run happy and very smooth. Just a bit fed up coz my lack of knowledge is stopping this memory from working.And im putting a pc together soon for a friend, so im desperate to try figure this out, so i can let him have my 1 gig corsair. I got my corsair running at 491 mhz instead of 400, a nice speed increase and a good overclock.So back to these memory timing, erm, what do i change exactly and how do i go about it. Oh, thanks guys, i really appreciate this. :)
 
In the BIOS set these timings-

CAS 3
TRCD (RAS to CAS Delay) 3
TRPD (RAS Precharge) 3
TRAS 8

Leave the others on auto, save and exit. If that works you can lower them a bit at a time to find the sweetspot.

Give the vdimm voltage a nudge up too.
 
Last edited:
well before you play with your bios, if you can you may want to save its current state

now assuming you can navigate bios to memory settings, take it off auto or SPD and set it to manual if it isnt already (im sure it will be) all people usually refer to timings in *** abbreviated form; CAS/tRCD/tRPD/tRAS, so the tightest ddr1 settings are generally taken to be 2-2-2-5 slackest is normally 3-5-5-15, with anything inbetween
if yours are tight, ie 2-2-2-5, then you want to aim for maybe 2.5-3-3-7, if your thinking what am i on about, i will explain more in detail now.
for 2.5 - 3 - 3 - 7
you want to set cas to 2.5 the options being (2, 2.5, 3 normally)
you want to set trcd to 3 the options being (2, 3, 4 - 8 normally)
you want to set trpd to 3 the options being (2, 3, 4 - 8 normally)
you want to set tras to 7 the options being (5 - 15 normally)

leave any other options as what they are, as i really cant be bothered to go into detail what they are and they dont matter hugely

if you can follow that, assuming your timings were as tight as possible, which corsair memory usually does default to, then you will have slackened them enough to hopefully get quite a few extra mzh out of them
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom