Corsair SODIMM / Inspiron 6400 quick question

Well 2 quick questions really.

The Ram that came in the Dell, was Samsung 2 x 512mb 4-4-4-12 (533), which did indeed run at 4-4-4-12 (533), I bought a 2 gig Corsair VS kit (4-4-4-12 667mhz), but it runs at 5-5-5-15, which looking at it in cpuz, appears to be the SPD for running it at 333mhz (667).....deep breath, so, I was wondering if there is some hidden menu on the Inspiron 6400 that lets you manually enter the memory timings manually, or are these wrongly packaged? The whole system is considerably slower with them in, so any ideas?

Also, The speedstep thing is doing my head in. 9 times out of 10, it defaults to 970mhz and only hits the 1.66ghz if its under load for a while, so is there any way of turning the speedstep off without locking the cpu at 970mhz?

Thanks :)

have you got enough voltage in them for them to do the 4-4-4-12 timings

secondly with your laptop if you switch off the speedstep and have your cpu running at full speed constantly you will probably find two problesm

1 your battery will run down a lot quicker

2 most importantly laptops dont get rid of heat as well as a pc so you would probably get overheating issues with the cpu

but if you did turn speedstep off it wouldnt lock at 970mhz it would lock at the cpu's proper speed

Thanks for the reply.

There are no voltage settings.

Battery life isnt a problem as it it will be plugged into the mains while in use.

I understand the heat issue thing, but it takes a while for the cpu to actually revert to 1.66ghz, it kind of takes a good drain of power for it to jump to full speed.

If I disable speedstep in the bios, it locks the cpu at 970mhz and it wont budge from there no matter what I do.

So, if possible, all I want to do, is lock the cpu at the 1.6ghz and run the ram at 4-4-4-12 @ 667 (533 would do).

From what I can see, there are no settings in the bios to change the ram timings, so thats why I was wondering if there was a hidden menu kind of thing, like gigabyte have in their bioses?

not to my knowledge i suppose to force it to 1.66ghz you could disable speedstep but do a small overclock evn of 1mhz and then it may force itself to run at that speed

There are no overclocking settings in the bios, as far as I can see, there is no software to do this either. There are no voltage settings, There are no settings for entering memory timings, nothing.

WIth speedstep disabled, every program sees the cpu as running at 970mhz or 1000mhz, These include Intel's thermal analysis tool, Sandra, CPUZ. But, windows now shows it as 1.66ghz. Its odd how none of the other programs do. When speedstep is enabled and the cpu is placed under load, all of the above programs show the correct speed of the cpu changing up and down.

Its the ram that I want to sort now, because of it needs to go back to scan, its going to be next year before it is sorted.

not really sure on the ram normally with most rams they have the timings advertised for sale ie 4-4-4-12 like my geils but when you put themin they default to looser timings in case your system cant run them at the right speed obviously with desktop pc's this is easily sorted by entering the bios and forcing the timings but if you dont have these options in the laptop i cant see how you will be able to get it to the tighter timings

sorry mate

Anyone any ideas on the ram please?

Laptop speed - check power options in Win XP. Normally defaults to "Laptop", cheange to "Home/Office Desk" and it will still throttle back when on battery, but on mains should run @ full speed.

I already had it set to "never" for everything for when it is plugged in. cheers.