Overclocking and RAM

[Nashsafc]

Because my BIOS is really bad, the motherboard i bought wasn't the cheapest to buy and seemed quite decent, it's made by XFX. i have no mulitplier for the HT frequency or the cpu. So i need to manually adjust the HT bus and so the ram gets overclocked at the same time. What i'm asking is, my ram is clocked to 800mhz, it's Corsair xms2 and it has heatsink on it, would i get away with overclocking it to 900mhz or 860 without it blowing out since, my motherboard is a pain in the arse, i can either have my ram running at 756 mhz or 860 mhz. I want to have it running at 800mhz ultimately but i can't because of no multiplier, please don't try and tell me where it is because stupid xfx has said that there are no multipliers on the mobo. Apart from that, having my ram at 756 mhz, would it be slower for gaming, as in i would get less FPS compared to having my ram at 800mhz?

 

[4745454b]

Do you mind filling in the gaps? A bit hard to suggest things if we don't know what you have. I get the feeling we are dealing with an AMD system, which means the memory frequency might be tied to the CPU multiplier. But I can only guess seeing as I have no idea what you have.

 

[leo2kp]

Nashsafc, to answer one of your questions, increasing your CPU overclock while taking a slight hit to your RAM speed should increase FPS anyway.

 

[Nashsafc]

I have a phenom ii 720 processor. The BIOS has no HT multiplier or CPU multiplier, and so when i overclock the cpu i overclock it by just adding frquency to the HT bus. This overclocks the ram as well. At stock the phenom is at 2.8 ghz and the ram is at 800mhz. If i overclock the cpu to 3.0ghz the ram will go up to 856 mhz. What i'm asking is if it is safe to have my ram running at that frequency since it is clocked to work at 800mhz. The thing is is that i can underclock the ram but it would be running at 756 mhz, and i'm asking also should i stick with this, ram running slightly slower than 800 it should not effect FPS in games by the slightest bit? The motherboard is XFX 8300 nForce 730a chipset. The ram i have already told you.

 

[Scotteq]

Apart from that, having my ram at 756 mhz, would it be slower for gaming, as in i would get less FPS compared to having my ram at 800mhz?

No difference a human being could detect.

 

[Mongox]

The RAM speed difference amounts to nothing, but by reducing the freq of the bus, taking the RAM down to 756, aren't you also reducing the CPU from 3.2 to 3.1 approx? That's about a 5% reduction of speed in all applications - not good at all.

Am I understanding what you said right?

There's no reason to think the RAM isn't doing OK at 864 now, you can certainly test it to make sure. It's not going to harm it.

Sounds to me as though your RAM is acting as 667MHz rather than 800 anyway. Hence the increments of 756 and 864 you're talking about only when boosting the bus - the RAM starts at 667? The next increment of the bus would take you to ~970? I assume you don't have an adjustment for the RAM voltage either on this board? Moving that up a little might start you at 800 - but would that be a good thing? If you start at 800, then boost the bus, you'd quickly be above 1000, etc... so you'd lose the nice change you're getting now with the bus.

Getting the CPU to run at 3.2 is going to improve the speed far more than getting the RAM itself to run faster. That's because the CPU clock speed is a real number that can be compared with percentages. And the effect of a faster CPU positively affect the RAM throughput also. The RAM speed is diluted by the CL - which represents clock ticks - you get throughput speed by multiplying the ticks by the RAM freq, adjusted by the down-time between transfers, taking into account the phase of the moon and on and on. LOL

I'd say leave it like it is, or increase the bus the next increment and see if the RAM will run over 900 - test with memtest86 and/or prime95 to make sure all is well.

 

[Nashsafc]

problem fixed people. I thought that there were no updates, XFX made it very invisible and hard for one to find their motherboard updates. But now i have done the updates, every thing is brill. CPU multiplier, HT link frequency to permanently keep still. I can keep my ram working at 800mhz all the time. Overclocking is a charm. I can see the use off multiplier unlocked cpu's now. Very much useful.