Asking Basic Memory Questions

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DsntWrkNidkY

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Jun 12, 2013
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So I have been looking for some answers to a few questions that have not been completely answered in the articles here. I am making a memory purchase to go along with my new hardware that I should be getting soon.
The first issue I am not sure of is I have read in several places that memory should be bought and installed in kits, but where it gets a little fuzzy is that it is also stated that combination with other memory kits, even of the same model is not recommended due to compatibility issues. Does this mean that I cannot buy a 16GB kit now and another exact kit later. If that is true then that would also imply that if I wanna fill all four Dimm slots then I would have to buy all four dimms at the same time because if the manufacturers have to tune (or whatever it is they might do, if anything) each stick of ram in a kit to each other then buying two different kits even at the same time would have compatibility issues. I doubt that would be the case but the wording on the product page gives me reason to doubt.

My second question pertains to overclocking. I watched the new egg vid where Paul and the Asus guy (Jake I think) were overclocking the ROG series board and they mentioned that the memory frequency is related to the CPU frequency which makes sense giving that the memory controller is now inside the CPU. What I picked up from tem is that at high clock rates you would start to have to make compromises to both mem and CPU to overclock them both. Now I am a novice at system building so correct me if I am wrong about that and I know next to nothing about overclocking which will soon be remedied when my new chip and board get here but I digress... The thing is, on some of these forums I have noticed that some people, in order to get their memory clock to say 1866 or even 2133 on an FX 8350, have said the CPU has to be clocked to 4.5 or more in order to run the memory at those speeds. So on one side I have experts saying CPU alone high good, memory alone high good, both of them together high not so good, better to have them both at medium. And on the other side I have forums saying that I need the most out of my CPU to get the most out of my memory. Someone with experience in the matter would be very helpful in making a decision on the right size\speed memory to buy.


I bought an AMD FX 6350 and an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2 to replace my stock gateway PC. I now that AMD specs say that the FX processors are verified up to 1866 with only one Dimm per channel and that they only tested with 4GB Dimms. I also know that most people say the performance increase between 1600 and 1866 is negligible. That being said, if there is a possibility to get my system to 32GB of 1866 with my FX 6350, then I would like to prepare for that possibility by buying 16GB of 1866 instead of 1600. I would appreciate any advise on the matter.
 
Solution
Tradesman1
DRAM is always best purchased as a single set, mixing sets can be problematic - when you buy a set, all the sticks have been tested to work together...also, the XMP programming is done by the packaged set, when you get to the advanced timings you'll find that timings change between say 2 and 4 stick sets i.e. tRFC may be 208 for 2 sticks yet 4 sticks take 314. And yes, you can buy two sets at the same time and they may well not work together, even two sets that have consecutive serial #s, I've bought 3-5 sets of DRAM at a time before (and through the EGG it will often be consecutive serial #s and the sets won't play nice together without tweaking voltages and timings......If you were to pull say 20 sticks from a production run, you...
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DsntWrkNidkY

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Jun 12, 2013
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Also, Does anyone know if you can stick a PCIE X1 card in a X16 slot and have it work? I have seen a few expansion card that are x4 or x2 but I have never seen a mobo with a x4 or x2 slot which made me wonder if x16 will fit them all.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

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Jun 5, 2013
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DRAM is always best purchased as a single set, mixing sets can be problematic - when you buy a set, all the sticks have been tested to work together...also, the XMP programming is done by the packaged set, when you get to the advanced timings you'll find that timings change between say 2 and 4 stick sets i.e. tRFC may be 208 for 2 sticks yet 4 sticks take 314. And yes, you can buy two sets at the same time and they may well not work together, even two sets that have consecutive serial #s, I've bought 3-5 sets of DRAM at a time before (and through the EGG it will often be consecutive serial #s and the sets won't play nice together without tweaking voltages and timings......If you were to pull say 20 sticks from a production run, you might only get 1 or maybe 2 four stick sets out of them, the rest end up in two stick or single stick packages.....that's one of the big reasons the higher freq and higher quantity sets cost more

OCing depends entirely on the skill of the OCer, to run high freq DRAM particularly with AMD takes a good OC, using the FX CPUs as an example there's two primary reasons 1) AMD has weak MCs (memory controllers) in comparison to Intel. AMD tends to (still) design MCs to operate primarily with 2 sticks and are not oriented to high freq DRAM i.e. the FX CPUs are actually native to 1333 DRAM contrary to all the 'native 1866 RAM MC' according to AMDs own BIOS and Kernel Programming Guide, which leads to 2) the AMD FX CPUs (the higher end anyway) are already pre OCed, AMD did this to perpetuate the Myth that they run 1866 native the 8150 was originally scheduled to come out as 3.3 or so and the 8350 at like 3.5, they OCed them for out of the box to give a higher clock rate and the abilitiy to run a couple of 1866 sticks without the user having to OC. Intel handles DRAM much better, but it still puts a toll on the MC, running high freq sticks liek 2666-3000 can have repercussions on the top OC as can high amounts (i.e. I typically run 32GB on my personal systems and get good OCs, but if I drop to 16GB or more so down to 8GB I can raise my OC on all the rigs....

You did your research on your CPU and dug up the facts, which is good, 1600 and 32 is achievable, you won't want high performance sticks, look to 1600 with a CL of 9, then with 32GB will want to get a nominal OC on the CPU and will need to raise the DRAM voltage up + 0.05 to 0.10 and will prob need to take the MC voltage up to 1.3 - 1.4

 
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DsntWrkNidkY

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Jun 12, 2013
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@Tradesman1

Thank you for your speedy reply, and for the advice as well. You have pretty much confirmed my suspicions on the memory speed in regards to my CPU and cleared up the confusion over buying multiple kits. To be honest it makes a lot more sense now why 4x4GB sticks would cost more than 2x8GB sticks of the same model clock and timings.

I had read about the fact that the native clock for memory was 1333 on the FX CPUs but I guess I didn't make the connection that they are probably maxed out for the average user at 1866. But I shouldn't be surprised. when I started to find my way around this new PC I bought last December (Gateway DX-4380G) I had never heard of AMD before, the last computer I bought was in 2008 and it have intel\Nvidia. I got excited because it was something new. I wanted to build a whole rig outta AMD. First I got a discrete graphics card, a Gigabyte Radeon HD 7850, along with a cooler master PSU to power it and a $30 dollar case to fit everything in, then I bought an SSD for all my games. Recently I was shopping for a new CPU because it turns out the graphics were just a part of my frame rate problem. But the more research I did on CPUs (mostly AMD) the more I realized that an intel would suit my needs and more importantly my wants better. Alas... Intel was a little out of my price range unless I settled to stick with a duel core. And while the core i3's have hyperthreading which is supposed to make them pretty even with even the 6300 according to CPUBoss.com, I just wanted to find something that had more than two cores. Call it superstition but most specs for recent games call for a quad core CPU. My current soon to be previous CPU is the AMD A-6 5600k. Not to mention that, at least to me, the FX processors look like they only have half the cores they say they do. there are only three modules on the 6300, its like the other three cores are AMD's version of hyperthreading. I came to this conclusion when not only did I see that the OS reads 3 physical cores and 6 logical, but also the picture of the architecture the AMD rep brought for presentation on new egg. It looks as if there are eight spaces on the die for the 8350 but four of those spaces look different from the other four. that alone does not say anything to me, who knows nothing of the process of making integrated circuits. But paired with what my OS is telling me it makes me wonder. I know this is a long seemingly pointless explanation that does not really pertain to the topic of this thread. The point is, had I the money, I would have rather gone with Intel. I don't do video or picture editing other than the occasional GIMP session in an attempt to mod my fallout or skyrim game. 3D editing is kind of meh, only once in a while for the same reason as GIMP do I use blender, and even then only to model, never to render. I really have no use for six or eight cores. Especially when in single threaded tests they do worse the more cores you have. But price dictates everything.

In any case I will take your advice and go with the 1600MHz. The CAS is a point lower anyway. I don't know how much of a difference one point will make but I do know that a DIMM with a clock of 1066 and a CAS of 5 will have the same response time as a DIMM with a clock of 2133 and a CAS of 10*. Maybe I will play around with AMD's RAMDisk and see what that is all about, I will have the memory to spare after all. :) Thanks again for the help Tradesman, I really appreciate it!

*http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-latency-gaming,3409.html
 
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DsntWrkNidkY

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Jun 12, 2013
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As a side note to anyone who reads this thread and wonders about the PCIE question, I tried it out with my new board and yes, you can plug a PCIE x1 into a PCIE x16 slot and it will work just fine. This is great to know if your board only has one x1 slot and it is covered by your video card.
 
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