RAM questions

godskitchen

Hello all,

My set up is as follows:

Vista Ultimate 32bit
Antec P180, very well cooled
Asus AN8SLI Premium
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Overclocked to 2.5GHz)
Up until today 1Gb of PC4300 RAM (2X 512MB sticks)

Today I added 2Gb of Corsair CMX1024-3200 (2X 1Gb sticks) into the 2 spare slots.

The PC would not boot, at all.

I then take the 1Gb of PC4300 out and leave the new PC3200 in. It boots. It was highly overclocked as it was using Manual settings from the BIOS that the old PC4300 RAM had been using. (See pic for original manual settings in BIOS)

I did not want to cook the ram so I accessed the BIOS and changed the settings to the ones indicated on the sticker on the PC3200. They were:

3-3-3-8 and 400MHz

The system would not boot with these settings. (it would if I changed to 200MHz, am I missing something?)

I turned the BIOS to Auto and it booted but all settings were below what what was on the sticker.

I then tried 3-4-4-8 and 400Mhz and it booted.

I then set the BIOS to Auto once again and added both the PC3200 and PC4300, it booted and you can see the results in the picture.

I know this is a bit messy and complicated, I dont know too much about the workings of RAM, I shall google it all tonight.

What I would like to know is which is the best config?

How much can I push the PC3200 before cooking it, could I use it with the original BIOS settings?

I have been testing each set up with SiSoftware Sandra Lite, the 1Gb of PC4300 preforms best, on the original overclocked BIOS settings.

Am I better off with more RAM or less that runs quicker?

Any advice would be great. Cheers

Blazer

I think what you are saying is that you are putting both sets of ram into this pc.
Mixing ram is always a bad idea as all sticks will run at the speed of the slowest hence all sticks are running at pc3200.
Your original ram was 533mz and the new ram is 400mhz.
I don't know whether you would get to 533mhz on the new ram but someone else might have an idea.
At present you are running at 400mhz.
I reckon cpu-z is giving you the default values for the ram and not the proper running speeds.
There's no way both sets of ram are running at different speeds and different latency. The bios will auto sync them to the slowest.
You might still be able to overclock the slower ram to match the higher ie overclock so all sticks are running at 533mhz (old ram will be only running at stock speeds)

godskitchen

Cheers for that Mathew Reilly!

When I boot it reports the ram as DDR 333............

Even though it is bringing down the PC4300 to the level of PC3200, am I still not better off than if I just had the PC3200 on its own? 3Gb better than 2Gb even if its holding something back?

And I take it I am better off with 2Gb of PC3200 than 1Gb of PC4300?

cpu-z seems to be reporting the different speeds compared to the BIOS....

Blazer

Nah...3gb is better than 2gb especially where Vista is concerned.
You won't be running in dual channel but that's only a tiny performance hit anyway so stick with the 3gb.

One thing...are you sure your other stick of ram is PC4200?..not PC2700 which is 333mhz?
Either one of your sticks is this or else you're underclocking your ram.
According to your specs your slowest ram stick is 400mhz so you shoud not be running under this.

godskitchen

Thanks again Mathew.

I am slowly getting my head around it.

On the old 1Gb of RAM it says on the sticker PC4300.

On the new 2Gb of RAM it says on the sticker PC3200 and 400Mhz with 3-3-3-8 timings.

When I set it to 3-3-3-8 and 400Mhz in the BIOS it will not boot.

When I put it on auto in the BIOS it changes the MHz to 266.......I was wondering if it is the same situation as when graphics cards report half the MHz because of DDR?

Blazer

godskitchen wrote: »

Thanks again Mathew.

I am slowly getting my head around it.

On the old 1Gb of RAM it says on the sticker PC4300.

On the new 2Gb of RAM it says on the sticker PC3200 and 400Mhz with 3-3-3-8 timings.

When I set it to 3-3-3-8 and 400Mhz in the BIOS it will not boot.

When I put it on auto in the BIOS it changes the MHz to 266.......I was wondering if it is the same situation as when graphics cards report half the MHz because of DDR?

That's right..forgot that
266mhz is actually 533mhz so you must be running overclocking then on the ram somewhere.

godskitchen

Ah right that makes more sense to me now, When I have the 2Gb PC3200 and 1Gb PC4300 it AUTO's to 333MHz................Guess I might need to rethink that?