XMP only for overclocking?

[mitchgixer6]

I need some RAM to finish my build, and ideally am looking at 8Gb of 1600MHz. I also need a CPU and am 90% decided on an i3 2100.

I know the i3 can't be overclocked, so are the XMP RAM sticks wasted on this CPU? Non XMP can be a fair bit cheaper, for now anyway.

Thanks

[kalniel]

Um, I'm not sure! I thought this was more a motherboard thing, but if the i3 can't run faster than 1333 then there's not a lot of point worrying about XMP. XMP is just a quick way of setting the speed, non XMP can be set just as fast, you just do it manually in the BIOS.

[mitchgixer6]

Ah right, thanks for this. Learned another new thing today then!

So XMP isn't really worth the extra £ then? I've not done any tweaking in the BIOS before but I'm game to give it a bash.

[kalniel]

Ah right, thanks for this. Learned another new thing today then!

So XMP isn't really worth the extra £ then? I've not done any tweaking in the BIOS before but I'm game to give it a bash.

If you've got a motherboard (and RAM) that supports 1600, but the default for the processor is 1333, then what usually happens is the bios sets the RAM speed to 1333 by default. To change this to 1600 (which doesn't have much effect if you're not using the graphics part of the CPU) you have to go into the BIOS anyway (unless there's a softare utility to do the same thing, but I'd prefer the BIOS). BIOS's are nice and friendly these days anyway. If you have XMP you find the RAM bit and set XMP profile to 'enabled'. If you don't have XMP you find the RAM bit and set the speed to '1600' (or equivalent, it might be a real speed - 800, or a multiplier).

What XMP does extra is force the voltage to be correct, and adjusts all lots of memory sub timings by a little bit, to values the ram manufacturer guarentees works fine. You can do the same changes manually, or you can just leave it on auto and the motherboard will do a pretty good job on its own (to the point you won't notice the difference even in benchmarks).

And the final point is that even RAM that's not sold as XMP might have an XMP profile anyway. You can check this in BIOS or a program like CPU-Z, which is what we discovered with a set of corsair 1600 DDR3 that we bought - it wasn't listed as XMP so I was checking the settings and discovered there was a profile, so I next time I could be bothered I enabled it and it works fine.

[mitchgixer6]

Thanks fo your very inofrmative post! I'm learning LOTS of new things now!

So, for a noob like me, it might be easier to go for some XMP RAM then.

But I suppose a new question now is, will I even notice the difference between say 1333 and 1600? A very light gamer with a Z68 board and wll be running an HD 5770 1Gb. I get the feeling the answer will probably be no. The main rean for me building a new rig is for HD editing an coding. Not too worred about the speed of a conversion etc as I'm not in a rush!

[kalniel]

Thanks fo your very inofrmative post! I'm learning LOTS of new things now!

So, for a noob like me, it might be easier to go for some XMP RAM then.

But I suppose a new question now is, will I even notice the difference between say 1333 and 1600?

You guessed right: No.