Tweaking your Ram

[stevedresser83]

-This is mainly about tweaking RAM.
-First off do this it helped me http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...rt=&PHPSESSID=

-Also i've heard that going into bios to manually set your RAM timings increased performance. Even if your not overclocking. Anyone have thoughts on this? Maybe a guide for noobs like me on how to do it?

[sunburst79]

First off the first post is about optimizing the system, it doesn't have a thing to do with your RAM timings.

Basicaly what it seems your interested in is optimising your RAM speed and timing in BIOS. To do this you need your RAM's manufacturers speeds and timing specs. What you really doing here is setting the BIOS timing to the RAM manufactuers specs.

A example would be the ASUS boards we use on the Intel Quads will set the RAM's speed (in MHZ) to one speed lower than the RAMS listed specs in order to make sure the machine POST's and Boots.

At the first boot DDR2 1066 with timings of 5-5-5-15 is detected as DDR2 800. It may autodetect the timing at the DDR2 800 defaults of 4-4-4-12 or it may correctly detect the timing as 5-5-5-15. At any rate we set the speed in MHz to the correct DDR2 1066 and then double check that the timings are set to the manufacturers specs of 5-5-5-15 @ 1006 HMz. If our RAM ran at 5-5-4-5-15 we would manually set those timing specs. Most of the time you memory timings will be auto dedtected correctly by a memory timing technology call SPD or Serial Presence Detect.

Still awake?

SPD is not however always 100% accurate, THE RAM chips may be marked up or down from what they were originaly manufactured at. The motherboard maker may have some safegards in place limiting the memory timing etc.

Basicaly you want to make sure your RAM is running at the manufacturers timing specs.

I don't recomend OVERCLOCKING memory in a DAW. It's to "Mission Critcal" If you want faster memory than you should budget for and buy faster memory. The stability is more important. You want a DAW to be balanced and working in harmony-overstressing one part in the chain for a minimal inprovement in RAM throughput seems like a bad tradeoff. Unless you you regularly run your DAW right up to the wall its doubtful that you will much if any gain from extremely tight memory timings. But under normal use but your memory will be running much hotter than its supposed to all the time, even if your not using that minor performance gain.

Not a good tradeoff in my opinion.

Crash your gaming rig and nobody gets hurt. Hard lock your DAW during the "Take of the Century" and EVERYBODY in the bands going to be Pi55ed 0FF cause you killed the vibe.

If you want to overclock you memory be my guest

Simply googling "Your Motherboards Name here " plus "BIOS Tweaks" or "RAM Timing" will usually turn up some good hits.

I think CPUz is a great utility because it will tell you the actual timings of the RAM while Windows is running.

[stevedresser83]

Maybe I should of started with this. I have a foxconn mars board, q6600, and 4x1gb corsair ddr2 800 4-4-4-12 RAM.

Here is bmp's of cpu-z

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/fil...specs-zip.html

Is there any point, now seeing the speeds it running at, to manually set the timings or whatever im supposed to set or should i just let it be?

[sunburst79]

Maybe I should of started with this. I have a foxconn mars board, q6600, and 4x1gb corsair ddr2 800 4-4-4-12 RAM.

Here is bmp's of cpu-z

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/fil...specs-zip.html

Is there any point, now seeing the speeds it running at, to manually set the timings or whatever im supposed to set or should i just let it be?

If I'm reading it right according to the SPD you memory is running at 5-5-5-18, which is right at the JEDEC#2 Spec. The last column is the EPP rating that is used with Nvidea Chipsets. EPP is somewhat like SPD and stands for Extended Performance Profiles. The EPP rating is the same as the prefered P35 Chipset timing of 4-4-4-12 for DDR2. It's probably safe to manually set the timing to 4-4-4-12 In BIOS. If it will run on a Nvidea at that speed it should run on a Intel. You will notice the EPP timings are at 2.1 volts vs 1.8 volts. You may need to bump the memory voltage to 2.1 Volts in BIOS to get it to run stable. This assumes Foxconn gives you that choice It also assumes the memory is rated for that voltage-it should list the voltage on the side of the heat spreader. Excede the voltage on the heat spreader at your own peril

A link to your Memory at corsair and or the board at Foxconn would be good too

I would try the 5-5-5-15 setting first and see how it reacts. If it seems stable then try the 4-4-4-12.

Also taking notes is a good idea as you change things in BIOS.

You can let a program called "Prime95" run for a few hours to make sure its stable. You can find it at "MajorGeeks.com" under (I beleive) "Benchmarking".

You should be able to get it to run at or close to the 4-4-4-12 spec.

You still have SpeedStep turned on judging from your CPUz Screen shots (they are showing your CPU is running at 1600 MHZ) SpeedStep has benn know to give PT fits and most of us have it turned off. After your testing is done you may want to disable SpeedStep if you have problems with PT.