3GB slower or 2GB faster, that is the ?

[halcyon]

I purchased 1GB (2x512MB) of Corsair DDR2-800 ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145040 ) to mate with my existing 2GB (2x1GB) Corsair DD2-800 ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145168 ). I figured they'd work reasonably well together in my Asus Striker Extreme. Well I was not correct. I can only get the memory to work if I open up the timings wide...5-5-5-15 (where they should run 4-4-4-12). Either set of RAM will do the CAS 4 timings if they're in alone, but together they only want the CAS 5 timings. I'm barely overclocking...E6850 to 3.37.

2 questions:

From a performance perspective would it be better to cut the new RAM out and get back to my 2x1GB Dominators (CAS 4 @ 900Mhz) or stick with the 3GB total (CAS 5 @ 825Mhz). I can't really feel the difference, subjectively but wanted to get some opinions.

Perhaps I should just RMA the 1GB and spend more than 2X morew on another set of Dominators (which aren't great to begin with, but at least all the RAM would more exactly match)? I don't need the 4GB but I hate to slow down my me new E6850 which I'm liking.

Thx for any good advice.

 

[jwolf24601]

Set your memory timings to 1:1 So the memory will run at 750mhz, that should let the CL4 work.

With intel systems not much benifit running anything other than 1:1 timings.

 

[halcyon]

I'll try that, thanks. 😉

 

[halcyon]

Thx...now THAT is working like a charm...lets see how far I can take this....

 

[zenmaster]

If that does not help, I do not think you would be able to notice the timings alone. You may also want to see if you wanted to OC higher and to see if the combo memory was holding you back. With just the timings, I dont think you would notice much of a difference. The C2D does not seem as sensitive as the AMDs to timing.s

 

[gustavompo]

I think you should let just the dominator, there's almost no difference between 2gb and 3gb of ram, by the way, you can overclock these sticks easily to 1000mhz with CL 5.