Ram speed question???

[silent]

hi

i have a gigabyte P35C DS3R mobo and currently have 2 gig of geil ultra low latency 800mhz ram.

i want to upgrade and try the ddr2 1066 or ddr3 1333mhz ram.

these are fairly affordable, 2 gig of ddr2 1066 corsair is £42 on scan inc and ddr3 is £62 inc on scan.

will i notice a speed difference?

i may change my E6300 core 2 duo processor 2. not sure to what though.

i dont overclock as i can never manage to do it.

whats everyones opinions?

better mobo maybe?

[staffsMike]

If you aren't overclocking there is no point getting faster RAM than PC6400. The chip has an actual FSB of 266MHz and even at stock that RAM is 400MHz. Since I have that RAM I know it most cases it can run up to 1066MHz anyway That doesn't sound like a bad motherboard either.

I thought the E6300 wasn't a bad chip for overclocking, tried clunks overclocking guide?

[silent]

i've tried all the overclocking guides and it always re-boots and goes back to defaults. only thing that stays is selecting the ram speed.

i'll try his again but my chip may have issues.

[Fraz]

If you aren't overclocking there is no point getting faster RAM than PC6400.

Well, that isn't really true. There isn't MUCH point in getting faster RAM, as the enormous L2 cache on modern CPUs mitigates the serious main memory access problems in modern computers.

However you definitely will get some performance gain with faster RAM even if you aren't overclocking. You just need to make use of the FSB/DRAM frequency divider in the BIOS. With the divider set to 1:2, if your FSB is 266 MHz, your RAM will be at 533 MHz, which in terms of DDR2 will be 1066 MHz. So you can make use of PC8500. Just don't expect some miracle performance gain. In general, I doubt it's worth the expense/bother.

[silent]

you see i tried to find the divider in my bios but i couldn't see it.

i will try and tweak my ram. i'll look at the gurus guide again tonight.

[Noksukau]

will i notice a speed difference?

If by notice you mean a slight increase in synthetic benchmark scores, then yes, if you mean, will you perceive your computer being faster in the things you do, then no.

Even if you did overclock, you'd probably be looking at a significant increases before you actually noticed a difference. But, that's not why most people overclock, it's fun, and simply getting the best from what you own. Just be careful not to get sucked into the idea of buying better hardware for overclockability. Often people can spend less and just buy faster CPUs to start with rather than buying specialist heatsinks, fans and motherboards to make a slower one faster. It's only really on the very top-end CPUs that I think this breaks the other way and it is an economic way to increase performance.

[mrt9888]

The E6300 has a low multiplier therefore you have to have fast RAM to overclock to about 3ghz - 3.6ghz, it would be easier to just keep your old RAM and get a different CPU e.g. the E6600 which has a multiplier of 9 which will overclock to 3.6 and still keep your RAM at 800mhz. The E5200 which should out now or soon is a good choice.

I have a similar board EP35 DS3R just DDR2 RAM though and it also resets to defaults if you find out how to make the overclock stick post back here and I'll do the same if I find out.

[Will404]

The E6300 has a low multiplier therefore you have to have fast RAM to overclock to about 3ghz - 3.6ghz, it would be easier to just keep your old RAM and get a different CPU e.g. the E6600 which has a multiplier of 9 which will overclock to 3.6 and still keep your RAM at 800mhz. The E5200 which should out now or soon is a good choice.

I have a similar board EP35 DS3R just DDR2 RAM though and it also resets to defaults if you find out how to make the overclock stick post back here and I'll do the same if I find out.

Or increase the multiplyer. If you cannot access it through the bios, then what about this http://downloads.desktopboards.com/idcc/ I watched the video(s), and i think that it lets you ajust the multiplier.

[ackrite26]

Or increase the multiplyer. If you cannot access it through the bios, then what about this http://downloads.desktopboards.com/idcc/ I watched the video(s), and i think that it lets you ajust the multiplier.

That software is not compatible with his motherboard.

I thought you watched the videos?

[mrt9888]

He could use the Easy Tune that comes on the CD with the motherboard.

[mrt9888]

I overclocked my Q6600 to 3ghz with the same board, the q6600 has 9X multiplier and I set the FSB to 333mhz and the SPD multiplier/divider to 2. Hope this helps with your overclock, I had the same problem as you not getting the OC settings to stick.

[Lanky123]

Don't forget that you need to press Ctrl + F1 in the bios to access settings like memory timings on Gigabyte boards. I would have thought overclocks would still work without that though...

[silent]

cheers all for the useful comments, i will try again this afternoon.