Memory Timings - Quick Question

[Loimere]

Hi All,

This is just a quick question. I got 2X1gig for one of my old machines as it was crawling on the 2X512 that it had. The RAM is PC3200 DDR400. That machine is an AMD X2 3800+ with MSI K8N.

I've been out of the RAM game for a while so all this timing stuff threw me off, I thought as long as they were relatively close I could put them in my MSI socket 939 board together happily.

With CPU-Z this is the info I get. The old RAM is Samsung with timings of 2.5 4 4 8 at 200Mhz. (2X512)

The new stuff is Hynix and has 3 sets of timings. (2X1)
133Mhz 2 2 2 6
166Mhz 2.5 3 3 7
200Mhz 3 3 3 8

When I combine them in the system and brought up CPU-Z it showed the new stuff running at the 166 setting. If I played with the timings in BIOS I could get both sets running at 200Mhz, but it wasn't a stable system half the time.

My question is, should I just stick with the new stuff (2X1) and sell off the old Samsung (2X512) or would I benefit from having 3 gig in that machine? I still use it for gaming time to time, but nothing major.

 

[dokk2]

i could be wrong but,,if you want to use all your ram you will have to put the slowest in first and let the system,, spd,,,the timings,,,or just go with the 2x1g and add more later..

 

[DrMaV]

Hey Loimere,

Keep the 3 gigs, and run at your 166 setting, 2.5,3,3,7 timings.

More memory is always better, and your memory:fsb is running at 1:1.

Should you try to run at 200, then it would have to be at 3,4,4,8 to be more stable (with slightly higher voltage if possible).

4 sticks of memory are always less stable and less overclockable than 2 sticks.

 

[Loimere]

Thanks for the opinions guys, right now it was the 2X1gig configuration, but I may throw the old samgsung in the first two slots and let the Hynix run at 166Mhz.

Will it matter much that it runs at 166 and not 200? I guess my question originally was, is it better to have 3 gig running, with two of them at 166, or just 2gig running at 200.

I need a good benchmark program to see if there will be any difference, any recommendations?

 

[mitch074]

Woah! Hold onto your horses!
I have a system that looks a lot like yours. Here's the problem:
- if you put your sticks in a strange order, you may disable dual channel - which is baaad.
- frequency-wise, 200MHz is the holy Grail of an s939 X2: it runs at the same speed as the CPU's main bus, and that provides a definite boost
- once you reach 2 gig of RAM, Windows XP doesn't get any faster if you add more RAM

My advice: replace the 2x512 Mb with the 2x1024 Mb, lock them on 200 MHz with 3-3-3-8 timings, and run your system like that. You'll get a bigger performance boost by disabling system restore, setting a fixed size for your page file (512 Mb or less) and defragmenting it (use PageDefrag), and switching to a 'light' antivirus+antispyware solution (AVG+Spybot). If you don't use network shares, disable the 'Server' service, and since you're the only user on that computer, disable fast user switching and remote assistance, then disable the 'Terminal server' service.
With such a setup, I could run FEAR with page file disabled on 2 Gb, max textures and the same CPU as you have.