Memory and timings for the motherboard

[fructinhit]

As I'm still talking about building a new system, there is something else I don't quite understand. The memory I want has timings of 4-4-4-12, with a voltage of 2.2V. It is DDR2 800 SDRAM. My question is (keeping in mind that I am not planning on overclocking) would a timing of 5-5-5-15 (or is it 18?) be better, and in any case, if I put the 4-4-4-12 ram in a motherboard that says it needs the 5-5-5 memory, does it adjust the memory accordingly, or it won't work? Thank you!

 

[Track]

The lower the timings the better the performance, not the other way.

There is no such thing as a motherboard that only supports CL5.

You're going to have to overclock anyway, because ur going to have to get the FSB up to 1600 from 1066 for it to be on a 1:1 with the RAM.

 

[fructinhit]

I should mention, the motherboards that I am looking at have the Intel 965 express chipsets (P965), and it seems to say that for such a chipset, it requires DDR2-800 memory with a voltage of 1.8V and timings of 5-5-5 or 6-6-6. Am I out of luck then, if I wanted to use the memory with 2.2V and 4-4-4-12? Thank you again.

 

[Track]

No, that memory will work just fine. Enjoy!

 

[fructinhit]

Thank you so much. Just one more question. Someone who bought a motherboard (one with the 965 chipset) said he put in his pc800 memory with 4-4-4-12 timings, but said the board recognized it as 5-5-5-16. Does this mean the board changed the timings, or that it is only seeing them wrong but should have no performance impact?

 

[Track]

If the board changes the timings to CL5, just change it back to CL4 manually.

 

[Mondoman]

This post may help explain the various timings a bit: http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1249881#1249881

 

[fructinhit]

so if I'm hesitant to overclock the processor (E6600), and I'm using the MSI 965 Platinum with Patriot extreme performance DDR 800 2x1gb with the stock being 4-4-4-12, should I use the bios to make the CAS 5-5-5-15 to ensure smooth performance? With Tomshardware doing those system builds (the midrange one was today), it looks like they used the same motherboard and memory as I plan to, and made different timings to the memory. Am I on the right track, or falling way off?

 

[Track]

You really need to stop being afraid.

If u manually set the latency to CL4 and it dosent work, go back and change it to CL5.

Same goes for the CPU. With a Zalman CNPS 9700 u should be able to get it up to at least 3.6Ghz, so overclocking to 3.2Ghz is a sinch!