Overclocking with 1066 Ram

[clarkey01]

Hi Fella?s

Some of my curial died yesterday so I have ordered Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel, will it be harder to OC with higher spec ram?

Cheers guys

 

[Sylvanas]

Short answer: No, it'll probably in fact be easier. The Ram won't be a limiting factor when overclocking with different memory dividers or high FSBs.

 

[faxon]

its a lot easier i found. i had to run my memory at 1:1 divider to help with northbridge stability (memory controller load) past 445FSB, and with 800MHz ram i would have had to overclock it to 934MHz to get the rest of my system stable @ 4.2GHz. doing this would probably have put enough extra load on my memory due to overvolting and running out of it's rated specs that it would have died quite prematurely. memory has a habit of being extremely sensitive to overvolting, and with DDR2 1066 kits running $50-55 a pop for a good kit, it makes no sense not to just go with 1066 from the start now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16820231166

i own 3 of that above linked kit. if your kingston gives you any trouble and you end up returning it, that kits serving me well for 8GB in my main rig and it's behaving even better alongside my 2x1GB of Ballistix in my 680i, though im about to upgrade that to a UD3P as well due to some major issues i had with its overclocking performance with my e5200, and the fact that i think the southbridge is dying on me since i lost a SATA port, a PCI slot, and the onboard sound

 

[clarkey01]

Well at the moment Im using 2x1Gb cruial and 2x1Gb value kingston for now, my Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500c comes on the weekend.

I tried overclocking with the mixed ram, didn't work. Will wait for the HyperX to come

 

[clarkey01]

I take it , with this being 2GB sticks, I simply put them in slots 1 and 2 , not 1 and 3 etc ?

 

[veri745]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
I take it , with this being 2GB sticks, I simply put them in slots 1 and 2 , not 1 and 3 etc ?

It depends on the motherboard, but most boards I've seen in recent generations would use slots 1 and 2, yes.

 

[Ben90]

Originally posted by: veri745

Originally posted by: clarkey01
I take it , with this being 2GB sticks, I simply put them in slots 1 and 2 , not 1 and 3 etc ?

It depends on the motherboard, but most boards I've seen in recent generations would use slots 1 and 2, yes.

yea make sure your running dual channel memory in bios or cpu-z; because on my old (really crappy) msi board i think the guy who painted the slots was drunk that day it went:

orange
green
orange
green

but the mobo reads the ram sticks like:

slot1 channel 1
slot1 channel 2
slot2 channel 1
slot2 channel 2

so i thought i had a bad mobo for about a week until by luck i found out that the color coding was wrong

 

[clarkey01]

Ram installed, but it appears it's running single channel? Bios setting?

Screenshot

 

[clarkey01]

Anyone know the setting to enable dual channel ?

 

[sticks435]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Anyone know the setting to enable dual channel ?

I would try moving one stick to slot 3. Not sure how what particular MB works, but on my DFI, dual channel is enabled by default, and depending on where you put your ram, that activates it.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: sticks435

Originally posted by: clarkey01
Anyone know the setting to enable dual channel ?

I would try moving one stick to slot 3. Not sure how what particular MB works, but on my DFI, dual channel is enabled by default, and depending on where you put your ram, that activates it.

Hey sticks, yeah I just tried that , it failed to boot up, then booted up fine, maybe need some extra voltage? But says I'm dual now - sweet

seems fine and stable


the clue should of been the colour coding on the MB, 2 slots blue (1,3) 2 slots yellow (2,4)

 

[sticks435]

Glad ya got it working. I think all those P35 boards are configured the same way, 1,3 or 2,4 are the dual-channel slots.

 

[clarkey01]

One issue, it says I am still running at 400Mhz (PC 640) this is 1066 ram and I made sure I ticked this in the bios....However CPU-z says ...NO

any other mem utilities or mem speed checkers out there?

 

[clarkey01]

any ideas?

 

[clarkey01]

bump

 

[sticks435]

You'll probably have to manually set the speed. 1066 isn't an offical speed, so most SPD tables don't contain it. Check your BIOS for a ram multipler, for ex, mine has 266, 333, 400, and 533.

 

[clarkey01]

Last question , is it harder to overclock with 8GB of ram vs 4GB of ram?

 

[sticks435]

While I don't have first hand expierence, I'd say yes. Especially if your running 4 modules of 2GB.

 

[faxon]

yea it definitely is. it puts a lot more stress on the memory controller (northbridge in your case), requiring more volts for the same FSB/memory speeds as with 2x2GB. however, 90% of the time you are better off with the extra 4GB of ram than you would be getting 100-200MHz more out of your CPU, so its worth the trade off. i should know, since im running 4x2GB in my system right now and i had issues getting it stable at 4.2GHz without upping the northbridge to 1.42v

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: faxon
yea it definitely is. it puts a lot more stress on the memory controller (northbridge in your case), requiring more volts for the same FSB/memory speeds as with 2x2GB. however, 90% of the time you are better off with the extra 4GB of ram than you would be getting 100-200MHz more out of your CPU, so its worth the trade off. i should know, since im running 4x2GB in my system right now and i had issues getting it stable at 4.2GHz without upping the northbridge to 1.42v

Cheers for the heads up Faxon, am stable with 1.21 @ 3Ghz, prime 95 with 4 instances for 6 hours, all seems fine. Will probly put off going to 8gb when needed.