Is there a difference between DRAM Status Memory speed and the one assigned by XMP?

iamapizza

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Jun 30, 2011
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I am using an Asus Sabertooth Z97 motherboard and my RAM is Corsair DDR3-1866. When I turned the PC on for the first time, the UEFI showed that my RAM speed was 1333MHz.

nEd2Ees.jpg


I searched a bit and figured that some motherboards may come with a deliberately 'capped' speed. That I'd have to enable XMP Profile #1 to see its actual speed. Upon enabling Profile #1, I see this

9QIiEvQ.jpg


This confused me, as the 'information' shows 1866MHz, but the DRAM Status shows 1333MHz. Is there something I'm doing wrong?
 
That doesn't look right, does it? I pulled up my own to see if it said the same thing, but it's showing my actual speed which matches all the other readings. I'm assuming you've done a full restart at some point between setting your XMP and when you check this?

Might want to run CPU-Z or MemTweakIt and see what it shows for your RAM speed.
 

iamapizza

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Jun 30, 2011
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I had a look at CPU-Z, and in there, it shows 993 MHz. I searched on this too and am led to believe that I should multiply this by 2. Is this correct? If so, then it is indeed 1866 MHz.

Are you on a Sabertooth mobo as well? I wonder if this is specific to Sabertooth builds only.

Also, I should have done a search on UEFI screenshots before. I just saw this:

http://benchmarkreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/asus_z97_sabertooth_bios_main.jpg

Which looks like a similar thing.
 
G

Guest

Guest
In my experience the BIOS reading can sometimes be a bit finnicky. If it's reporting correct in CPU-Z when you're in the OS then it's more than likely running correctly.

All DDR3 comes clocked at 1333MHz, factories then assign an overclocking profile that you enable in the BIOS based on the bin of that particular DIMM.
If you've enabled the profile, and it stays enabled during a few restarts, then everything should be fine.

Perhaps updating the BIOS might help? It could be a bug.