Ripjaws PC3-12800 DDR3 1600Mhz Low Speed

[gearbrain]

Hi all, I bought the following memory recently http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Home/Product/50220 however there's a small problem. It's not operating at the speed it advertises, and when I try to set it to that manually in the bios, it freaks out and won't boot. Current speed is around 700Mhz which AFAIK should be 800Mhz. screenshot here: http://www.imgjoe.com/x/memspeeds.jpg


Both modules are in identical slots on the motherboard (two blue ones, Asrock M3A UCC mobo) and have the timing set manually to 9-9-9-24.
My CPU (AMD Phenom II X4 965) is OC'd to 3.6Ghz but the same happens even at stock speeds. I only bought this memory yesterday too so I could still take it back to the shop if you think it might be worth doing.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks in advance

 

[o1die]

800 is the correct speed, as reported by cpu-z. Ram is double duty; speed rated coming and going so 1600 is often reported at 800.

 

[gearbrain]

Ah, yes, I understand double data rate, but in the screenshot CPU-Z is reporting 706.6Mhz as DRAM speed. Is that normal?

"Current speed is around 700Mhz which AFAIK should be 800Mhz. "

 

[gearbrain]

I solved the problem. I had to go into my BIOS and manually set the DRAM speed to 800Mhz /1600. I'd tried this before but it would freak out and not even give me a post. It turns out the RAM wasn't getting enough power. To solve it I set the memory clocks to 800Mhz again but this time increased the voltage to that specified on the packaging, 1.5v and it booted fine, all clocks reporting 800Mhz. Can someone mark this thread as solved please?

 

[geekapproved]

800 is the correct speed, as reported by cpu-z. Ram is double duty; speed rated coming and going so 1600 is often reported at 800.

What? LOL

Ram speed doesn't come and go, 1600mhz ram is ALWAYS shown as 800mhz. ALWAYS.

 

[RetiredChief]

LOL - As the old saying go, when all else fails - RTFM. Ladies Read the manual - real Men, only when all else fails. Again you are not the first, nor the last!!
As others have found out the hard way, one of the first things to do is set Ram voltage.

 

[gearbrain]

I'd expect the stock speed and voltage to already be set by default without tweaking. Oh well, you live and learn!

 

[RetiredChief]

They are set to "stock" speed - Basiclly that is the standard.
1600 is really consider an OC. To insure that the computer boots; ram will normally boot to JEDEC specs . You can set most computers to boot to XMP, but you have to enable it and select the profile that is stored in the ram module. This is what I did, and the computer set all the timing and the voltages, didn't have to do a tine except verify it is was set properly - ran cpuid cpuz and looked at memory tab vs what is stored in RAM - the SPD tab.