Confusing DDR3 frequency

[olavkleppa]

Hi!
I am running an old system, but just changed my bottleneck which was the memory.
Upgraded to Kingston HyperX 2x4 GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM.

CPU is my good old i7 920, running a stable overclock for 9 yerars now.
Mainboard is EVGA X58 SLI LE

In CPU-Z my DRAM is showing 502 Mhz. This is a little low? Also when running userbenchmarks, my RAM doesn't register at all.
Any ideas?

 

[The Paladin]

well considering this motherboard supports triple channel ram (normally means you should by your ram in set of 3 ram sticks) I am surprised your system boot at all with 8GB of ram in dual channel mode
ref: https://www.manualslib.com/manual/50155/Evga-141-Bl-E757.html#manual


anyways I also found in the motherboard manual a BIOS options regarding setting the speed of the ram on the motherboard, maybe it was et to the old ram frequency and needs to be changed.
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/50155/Evga-141-Bl-E757.html?page=59#manual

 

[4745454b]

Why are you surprised it boots? Dual channel boards boot with a single stick of ram just fine. It just means he's using dual channel instead of triple channel. Not a huge difference really.

What is it set for in the bios? Remember that this is DDR, so your 502MHz is really 1004MHz. Which is still a really odd frequency. Sounds like you need to go into your bios and set up your new ram.

 

[ElectrO_90]

The FSB is 2:6 ratio, most computers are 1:6
So doesn't that mean its running at 1500mhz?

 

[olavkleppa]

Would it be ideal to buy one more 4 GB, to run triple channel?
I will try to adjust in bios, just getting confused when the DRAM value suddly gets multiplied by a factor of 2 or 3.

 

[boju]

920's memory controller is rated for 800/1066 https://ark.intel.com/products/37147/Intel-Core-i7-920-Processor-8M-Cache-2_66-GHz-4_80-GTs-Intel-QPI

If memory frequency is left on auto or overclock set to manual instead of XMP it will default to 1066 DDR. Your overclock may continue to be stable with memory set to 1600 or maybe not. If not then lower it to the next option down.

1366 platform can run dual channel, triple channel is just an advanced option for this platform but isn't necessary, the performance can be better or worse in some cases.

 

[ElectrO_90]

At the end of the day, the ram speed won't add much to the over performance for your computer.
Ram is generally the least important for overall feel/speed of a computer. Ram is fast no matter what speed it is and for the price of expensive ram the returns get smaller and smaller.

 

[4745454b]

At the end of the day, the ram speed won't add much to the over performance for your computer.
Ram is generally the least important for overall feel/speed of a computer.

Yes and no. The difference between 800 and 1066 isn't much. But once you start moving up several step it starts to make an impact. Ryzen at launch had horrible issues with RAM and the speed. But once the ram update happened and Ryzen supported better frequencies the faster RAM was much more noticable. Seeing as most people's demanding app is gaming, lets look at the effect RAM speed can have.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-agesa-1006-performance-update-review,8.html

Moving from 2133MHz ram to 2900 or 3200 shows some nice gains in some games. (Ignore the last/darkest bar, the CPU has been OC'd.) In Deus Ex: you can gain 10FPS more by moving from 2133 to 3200. Notice that's true before the RAM update as shown by the tallest blue bar. That's also more than 10% gain. Hitman shows a smaller gain though the gain is still there. Rise of the Tomb Raider again shows a greater than 10% gain by moving from the slower speed ram to 3200MHz. BF1 and Tom Clancy are both bottlenecked by either the CPU or the GPU. But it is possible for faster ram to give you a nice boost if the application needs fast ram speed.

 

[ElectrO_90]

At the end of the day, the ram speed won't add much to the over performance for your computer.
Ram is generally the least important for overall feel/speed of a computer.

Yes and no. The difference between 800 and 1066 isn't much. But once you start moving up several step it starts to make an impact. Ryzen at launch had horrible issues with RAM and the speed. But once the ram update happened and Ryzen supported better frequencies the faster RAM was much more noticable. Seeing as most people's demanding app is gaming, lets look at the effect RAM speed can have.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-agesa-1006-performance-update-review,8.html

Moving from 2133MHz ram to 2900 or 3200 shows some nice gains in some games. (Ignore the last/darkest bar, the CPU has been OC'd.) In Deus Ex: you can gain 10FPS more by moving from 2133 to 3200. Notice that's true before the RAM update as shown by the tallest blue bar. That's also more than 10% gain. Hitman shows a smaller gain though the gain is still there. Rise of the Tomb Raider again shows a greater than 10% gain by moving from the slower speed ram to 3200MHz. BF1 and Tom Clancy are both bottlenecked by either the CPU or the GPU. But it is possible for faster ram to give you a nice boost if the application needs fast ram speed.

We're not talking about Ryzen, we are talking about this chip here and now....Which is why I said what I said.

 

[4745454b]

Can you provide any proof that faster ram speeds don't speed anything up? I admit it won't matter for every task, but it usually matters for at least some.

 

[boju]

This doesn't need to escalate

https://www.anandtech.com/show/2792

Memory speed can improve performance there's no doubting that but depends what you're doing. In gaming on this generation difference between 1066 , 1333, 1600 through to 1866 is marginal. Synthetics and other CPU related tasks beneficial to memory speeds would be noticeable, there's no disagreement there.

To be fair, the Nehalem architecture shouldn't be compared to architecture's currently where ram speed can dramatically make a difference.

 

[4745454b]

I linked a Ryzen chart simply because that's what's easy to find. It's the current CPU so easiest to find info on. While I agree that not all tasks will improve with faster RAM and there will be a point where you are spending $$$ and not getting any additional benefit from it, I wouldn't bother getting just any ram that fits the budget which is how I read Electro's post.

I finally found the game page and would like to point out that while most games show no improvement in avg frame rate, the minimum frame rate goes up in some. FC2 shows a >10% improvement in minimum frames. Dawn of War II minimum frames goes up by 25%. H.A.W.X goes up by 10%+ If you are worried about gaming, half the games they tested show improvements in frames rates. Sounds like a good idea to pay attention to RAM to me.

 

[boju]

You're right, minimum fps in games can matter with ram speed, i saw those results too. Was wrong of me to compare 1066 to 1866.

 

[4745454b]

To be honest I feel that everyone's been right in this thread. Buying the fastest possible ram is a good way to spend more than you needed to. The difference between the fastest ram out there and one or two steps back isn't worth the extra cost. Electro basically said as much in his post. I personally felt he didn't give ram enough credit and wanted to make a fast comment on it. I may have erred by stressing RAM choice as much as I did. I do think the ram you get matters, though as the links have shown it won't matter in all cases. I see we are now up to DDR4-4200. No way would I get anything like that. The cost just isn't really worth it. DDR4-3000+ is just fine.

I'll be quiet about this as I don't want to ruin the thread farther.