DDR, and DDR2 RAM is running at 3/4 full speed

[kihles]

Yes. I said DDR, and DDR2. I'm using one of the ASRock boards with the DDR/DDR2 options. No I'm not running them simultaneously.

The RAM always shows up as 3/4 of what ever the speed is. If its PC3200, its showing up as PC2700. If it's PC2 5300 then its PC a stage below.

Using
400W Corsair
Windows XP
and 2x Kingston ValueRam PC3200 CL2.5
Supposedly the CPU is 800 mhz FSB, and 200 "effective" and a multiplier of 17.

Yes the RAM did work on other computers. It still does even on this one, but this one shows it being slower, even with the higher rated power supply.


I noticed the processor shows up in BIOS as 3.4 which is full speed but in XP it shows up as 3.39.

I thought maybe it was spread spectrum settings causing it so I turned it off. Someone said if your CPU has a certain timing it will force the RAM to match. Supposedly the CPU is 800 mhz FSB, and 200 "effective" and a multiplier of 17.

That didn't change anything.

I also tried to change the RAM speed in the BIOS. It has an option to pick the speed (DDR400, 333, 266). So I picked DDR400, and got to the XP loading screen and it crashed (I assume that meant the RAM got unstable.


Everything is set to "Auto" and when changed to what the settings should be it crashes. I checked the BIOS monitor and it says the voltages are farly close (about .1 off on 5, and 12).

Any ideas?

 

[dickcruz]

yes because its double data rate, you need to select your RAM speed as 200MHz to get the 400 out of PC3200. PC2700 will correspond to 166 on the clock speed. your ram is unstable because you're trying to run it at 800 MHz DDR with stock voltages.

 

[dickcruz]

if your CPU is at a certain clock because of your FSB then you can set the memory divider up, this is a ratio of your FSB to RAM, which is infact what you're effectively doing by setting your ram up with a custom clock settings

 

[kihles]

yes because its double data rate, you need to select your RAM speed as 200MHz to get the 400 out of PC3200. PC2700 will correspond to 166 on the clock speed. your ram is unstable because you're trying to run it at 800 MHz DDR with stock voltages.

No, I just checked to make sure too.
BIOS has opions that look like this
RAM Speed:
Auto
133mhz 2100
166mhz 2700
200mhz 3200

It even tells you to make sure you know what you're putting it at.

Also I am sure the RAM is JEDEC compliant with 2.6v tolerance.

 

[dickcruz]

hmm, is anything else overclocked? chances are that your CPU is undervolted, that will cause your computer to crash at the loading screen. I suggest that you get memtest86+ and run it for a while and see if anything comes up. disable cool 'n quiet or something similar. could you show what kinda mobo you've got going on ?

 

[kihles]

hmm, is anything else overclocked? chances are that your CPU is undervolted, that will cause your computer to crash at the loading screen. I suggest that you get memtest86+ and run it for a while and see if anything comes up. disable cool 'n quiet or something similar. could you show what kinda mobo you've got going on ?

Oh nothing should be overclocked, I wasn't trying to and wasn't planning on doing it.

I checked everything out before hooking it up and everything "works out" on paper. So it shouldn't be any compatibilty issues.

I don't have pictures, but I can say its a
ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R 2.0
using 2x 512 Kingston ValueRam PC3200 CL2.5 (no heat spreader)
with a single Ultra ATA HDD, and a single IDE DVD burner, and a ati AGP 9550XL

Again nothing should be overclocked unless it was doen by the factory, I'm the one that got all this stuff so it shouldn't have been monkied without me knowing.


I thought maybe it's over heating too causing that. The CPU says 40C' 105F'. The processor is rated at 90W so it seems fine.


I thought maybe there was some special restriction on the motherboard's hardware but it says that is within tolerance, and the manufacturer even touts this board AS an overclocking board. So why is it undercloking?

 

[dickcruz]

well usually some boards just dont support RAMs at their native frequencies but if the board can infact take those numbers i don't see why not. check and make sure there are no errors with the RAM, run MEMTEST86+

 

[kihles]

well usually some boards just dont support RAMs at their native frequencies but if the board can infact take those numbers i don't see why not. check and make sure there are no errors with the RAM, run MEMTEST86+

Actually I think it had to do with the DDR DDR2 options. The processor I'm using is a 64 bit processor usually paired with DDR2 and up so once I switched to DDR2 it showed the correct speed settings.

The motherboard supports 800/1066 FSB processors so its all the way from kentsfield to pentium 4. So you can get some interesting combinations.

It must have been just making it compatible. I switched over to DDR2 and its showing correctly.