How do I know if I need to change my RAM timings?

[kevman]

I have a northwood 1.6A running stable a 133 FSB. I bump the FSB up to 138. system get's unstable, prime95 gives me round errors and hard bluescreen crash occurs. Does this have to do with my voltage or my RAM timings? My ram is Crucial 512MB PC2100 the mobo is Asus p4b266. Should I increment the voltage or change the Ram timeings?

 

[dunkster]

Generally, advance fsb incrementally until system is unstable, and then increase VCore for stability at that speed. Repeat until increasing VCore won't help stability. Beyond that point, increasing VCore only adds heat.

Personally, I tweak dram settings for max memory throughput, then work on the FSB. Same for memory voltage - increase memory voltage until further increases don't help stability.

Depending on the quality of your memory, at some point you may have to back off on dram timings as well to get stability at higher FSB speeds.

At some point, you'll have to decide what combination of FSB speed and memory throughput produces the best overall system performance. I like the Quake3 timedemo benchmark results for determining this.

Hope this helps!

 

[kevman]

<< Generally, advance fsb incrementally until system is unstable, and then increase VCore for stability at that speed. Repeat until increasing VCore won't help stability. Beyond that point, increasing VCore only adds heat.

Personally, I tweak dram settings for max memory throughput, then work on the FSB. Same for memory voltage - increase memory voltage until further increases don't help stability.

Depending on the quality of your memory, at some point you may have to back off on dram timings as well to get stability at higher FSB speeds.

At some point, you'll have to decide what combination of FSB speed and memory throughput produces the best overall system performance. I like the Quake3 timedemo benchmark results for determining this.

Hope this helps! >>



Thanks,

I'll probably bump up the vcore littel by little while jackign up the FSB.

As for the memory, I don't think I understand the concept of why I would need to change the timings, or how to effectively change the timings, each settign at oone time, or do I setthe four fields together? also what does the Voltage om the memory do? My guess would be that the timing on the memory is similiar to jacking the FSB, and that the voltage on the memory does the same as Vcore. Let me know if my assumption is correct.

 

[kevman]

Bump, if anyone can help.

 

[rosco6912]

Wish I could - but I am suffering from the SAME thing w/ my MALAY 1.8A and p4b266-c (newegg)

 

[mschell]

I like to test memory timings - settings with a program called Doc Mem - www.simmtester.com -
Set the Mem frequency and desired timings in the BIOS and when the system reboots after saving settings it will boot from the floppy and run the program in DOS. If the 10 min test is error free then you know that overly aggressive mem settings will not be a problem. You can also tweak the memory higher and retest without the worry of corrupting your Windows installation.
Generally the faster the memory bus runs the slower you have to set the timings, ie. turbo to normal. If you do get errors on a test, lowering the timings one notch will generally solve them although I've had the test report a few memory errors and Windows ran fine none the less.
If the test generates errors at the memorys default speed then you have a bad module. You can generate a printable report to send along with the RMA or show the dealer, much better than saying "memory won't work".