Ram voltage

[gammaray]

hey guys,

im sure its been answered/asked before but,

whats the difference between memory ddr3 ram with 1.5V and 1.65V ?

 

[Blain]

All else being equal, the lower the rated voltage, higher the quality.
1.5v is the JEDEC DDR3 standard.

 

[Puppies04]

hey guys,

im sure its been answered/asked before but,

whats the difference between memory ddr3 ram with 1.5V and 1.65V ?

The main difference you need to worry about is that sandy bridge only officially supports 1.5v RAM and running higher rated DIMMS with a SB chip could potentially cause instability or part failure.

 

[FAUguy]

hey guys,

im sure its been answered/asked before but,

whats the difference between memory ddr3 ram with 1.5V and 1.65V ?

The 1.5v runs at regular 1600MHz DDR3 memory, there are even some lower voltage models at out there. The faster memory uses 1.65v since it is over-clocked. I have the Mushkin model 996997 and it runs at 2133Mhz at 1.650v. Due to the large heat-sink on it (and case fans) it runs cool. If I go into the BIOS and back it down 1.5v, I also have to lower the speed to 1600Mhz. After running some benchmarks, the extra RAM speed is worth it to me.

 

[fffblackmage]

^What kind of benchmarks?

 

[Puppies04]

^What kind of benchmarks?

Waiting with baited breath...

Edit. Also FAUguy can you clarify what cpu you are running on.

 

[FAUguy]

Waiting with baited breath...

Edit. Also FAUguy can you clarify what cpu you are running on.

It was like 5 month ago when I built the system and ran some benchmark programs, don't have them installed any longer, but the paper I kept shows when the RAM was set to 1600MHz it got a bandwidth of 16GB/s, but at 2133Mhz it was 27GB/s bandwidth.

Intel 2600K CPU at 2.6GHz.

 

[Coup27]

The main difference you need to worry about is that sandy bridge only officially supports 1.5v RAM and running higher rated DIMMS with a SB chip could potentially cause instability or part failure.

There is some definite confusion on whether Sandy Bridges support 1.65v. There's a discussion going on below with links from Intel's website which contradict themselves.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2225428