PC2-5300 667mhz

[phix90]

Ok, I have a dell laptop 1 year old E1505 model. Intel 945GM mobo

it came with 512 megs of ram and ran super slow with vista so i decided to buy 2gigs of kingston pc2-5300 667mhz DDR ram.

I just got the ram today and put it in the PC, it registers and shows i have 2038 megs of ram now. The problem is it shows it running at 533mhz in the bios. I paid for 667mhz why is it not running at this speed? I also then ran cpu-z test to show the ram speed and it said slot 1 and 2 pc2-5300 and 333mhz? WTF??

I checked the motherboard capabilities and it says 2gigs max and 533/667 mhz


Thank you

 

[GSTe]

CPU-Z shows the ram's actual speed. This is half the rated speed. DDR modules have ratings such as DDR800, DDR1066, DDR667, etc because DDR transmits data twice every CPU clock cycle (ddr stands for double data rate), so the powers that be decided to give it these rated numbers to represent that. DDR800 therefore runs at an actual frequency of 400MHz, but has a rating of '800'. In this case CPU-z is showing that your ram is running at it's rated speed of 667, which is an actual speed of 333MHz, so all is well with your computer

 

[phix90]

You're the man! Gracias! Quick question tho...why does the bios at startup say 533mhz?

 

[GSTe]

Does this with a lot of kits.... I have some PC8500 that should say 1066 but says DDR800 at startup. I think it depends on the spd chip in the ram, or perhaps it's the bios that doesn't recognise it correctly. Not sure to be honest.