How much of a bottleneck is my ram?

[nevesis]

Hey guy's,

Here's the deal, I'm currently running an e6600 @ 3.78 (420x9) with Kingston DDR-2 667 (2GB) the motherboard is an
ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi.

Orthos /tat/prime95/superpi/3dmark06 (first 3 all running at once) stable for hours upto 420x9, any higher than that and I start getting errors (memory errors, not cpu in orthos..)
temps are great, (zalman 9700 cooler) Antec P180 Case CPU 39c Idle and 62C Full load @ 1.47v, northbridge @ 1.55.

My question is; how much of a bottleneck do you think my 667 DDR-2 is, and how much further would I be able to push my chip with pc2-6400?

Thanks,

 

[Lupiron]

I would guess you dont wanna run your ram any slower than the FSB. So PC 800 should show a gain because any good ram could easily run at 840mhz, that way its running in sync with your FSB. And its not really that expensive. Equal to FSB = good. Slower would have to be bad!

-Lupi!

 

[Lupiron]

Then again, you never mentioned what SPEED your ram was currently runnin' at.

 

[nevesis]

I'm running the ram 1:1 so you were correct, 840mhz

now I need to find a brand to go with... been thinking about Crucial Ballistix, any suggestions?

 

[Lupiron]

Kingston has always been decent as far as their ram goes, but 333 @ 420 is kinda pushing it. You didnt mention if its just Kingston no name, as in, their generic junk, or KVR as they call it, hehe. Or if it was a higher model. Guess it doesnt matter since it errors. I had some entry Corsair 800 Their value line and as far as actual speed goes, well, I could safely get to 900ish, then they start to fail. Thats unlinked. When in sync, I only get like 415 max from them.
So the value line appears to oc just a bit over its rating, thats unaltered. So if you made some sort of heat dissipation ya might get more... But...
Since you can OC that processor a lil more on air and be just fine, might as well get some decent pc800 ram and just OC it to about 435 in sync, and add a lil vcore to your processor and yer good to go. (Maybe. Could just explode. If so, please disregard my advice in the future.)



--Lupi

 

[bob8701]

what memory timing you are running, you can find out by use CPU-z or check in bios. people pay extral money for fast timing and short latency. most time when you push the frequency over the standard value, you have to loose the time and increaing the voltage to keep the oc stable.

 

[Evilonigiri]

As long as you lower the timings accordingly, there is no notable difference in everyday programs and games with DDR2 800 or DDR2 667 or whatever.

 

[nevesis]

what memory timing you are running, you can find out by use CPU-z or check in bios. people pay extral money for fast timing and short latency. most time when you push the frequency over the standard value, you have to loose the time and increaing the voltage to keep the oc stable.

5-5-5-15-2t @ 2.0 volts (stock rating is 1.8)

I've tried upping the mem voltage to 2.1 but that doesnt solve the mem errors.

 

[bob8701]

may be that is the limit of your memory, does your memory has heatspread? up the voltage generate more heat, memory will burn out just like everthing else.