Hi,
So recently I bought some DDR3 ram to upgrade my desktop from 4GB to 16GB, and to be honest, I think I bought it a little too hastily.
I decided to go with Crucial, as it was about the cheapest branded, and had a choice of "Ballistix Sport" or "Ballistix Tactical," which is XMP ram, and was also slightly cheaper. Both 1600Mhz.
So here's the hasty part. My motherboard doesn't support XMP (not that I could find from in BIOS settings, anyway). But after googling I read that XMP would still normally work with a motherboard that didn't support it.
My assumption was that if I used XMP ram with my motherboard, although I wouldn't be able to overclock it, it would run at the standard specified speeds and use the specified CAS latency, and if I upgraded the motherboard at a later date, I could then make use of the XMP. Now the thing was, the CAS latency figures were these:
Ballistix Sport - DDR3 1600Mhz (PC3-12800). Cas Latency: CL9 (9-9-9-24). Voltage 1.35v.
Ballistix Tactical - DDR3-1600 CL8 (8-8-8-24). PC3-12800. 1.5V
So, I figured easy decision, plumb for the faster, cheaper Ballistix Tactical, right?
Well, on getting the ram, one seems to be a dud, and the PC refuses to boot with it in, either with the other stick or on its own. I thought "oh great, incompatible", BUT, the second stick works fine. I ran memcheck on it, and after two complete passes it's fine, and I've had a stable PC with it in for a few days now.
One problem, though, Memcheck (v5.01) reports the CAS wait states as 9-9-9-24. This wouldn't be so bad, but to make things worse, it appears the RAM's only running at 1330Mhz, not 1600Mhz - "665Mhz (DDR3-1330)".
So, have I screwed up? Does XMP ram run at lower CAS and Mhz settings if the motherboard is not XMP compatible? Or could Memcheck just be reading the settings wrong?
To confuse things further, on running Windows 7's performance analyser, my RAM performance figures have gone from 5.9 to 7.5, which suggests it's reasonably faster than the 4GB that was in there, in spite of Memcheck's disappointing looking CAS figure. That said, I'm not sure on what criteria Microsoft measure ram performance. Perhaps I'm just getting a higher score simply because I've gone from 4GB to 8GB.
Obviously I now have return either 1 or both of the sticks, but I'm pondering whether to return to get the faulty one replaced, or return both for a refund and go for some regular 1600MHz DDR3 ram. It all depends if those CAS figures and Mhz figures reported my Memcheck are correct, and if so, whether I can boost them.
I can't find any way of changing the RAM's MHz in the BIOS (Dell Vostro desktop), but judging by what Crucial offers me on its website, in the way of standard ram, my PC is both compatible with 1600Mhz and 1.5v ram. Any ideas?
TIA.
P.S. I'm just running the one working 8GB XMP stick in the PC, I'm not mixing ram with the old 4GB stick that was in there, which I know can hit performance.
So recently I bought some DDR3 ram to upgrade my desktop from 4GB to 16GB, and to be honest, I think I bought it a little too hastily.
I decided to go with Crucial, as it was about the cheapest branded, and had a choice of "Ballistix Sport" or "Ballistix Tactical," which is XMP ram, and was also slightly cheaper. Both 1600Mhz.
So here's the hasty part. My motherboard doesn't support XMP (not that I could find from in BIOS settings, anyway). But after googling I read that XMP would still normally work with a motherboard that didn't support it.
My assumption was that if I used XMP ram with my motherboard, although I wouldn't be able to overclock it, it would run at the standard specified speeds and use the specified CAS latency, and if I upgraded the motherboard at a later date, I could then make use of the XMP. Now the thing was, the CAS latency figures were these:
Ballistix Sport - DDR3 1600Mhz (PC3-12800). Cas Latency: CL9 (9-9-9-24). Voltage 1.35v.
Ballistix Tactical - DDR3-1600 CL8 (8-8-8-24). PC3-12800. 1.5V
So, I figured easy decision, plumb for the faster, cheaper Ballistix Tactical, right?
Well, on getting the ram, one seems to be a dud, and the PC refuses to boot with it in, either with the other stick or on its own. I thought "oh great, incompatible", BUT, the second stick works fine. I ran memcheck on it, and after two complete passes it's fine, and I've had a stable PC with it in for a few days now.
One problem, though, Memcheck (v5.01) reports the CAS wait states as 9-9-9-24. This wouldn't be so bad, but to make things worse, it appears the RAM's only running at 1330Mhz, not 1600Mhz - "665Mhz (DDR3-1330)".
So, have I screwed up? Does XMP ram run at lower CAS and Mhz settings if the motherboard is not XMP compatible? Or could Memcheck just be reading the settings wrong?
To confuse things further, on running Windows 7's performance analyser, my RAM performance figures have gone from 5.9 to 7.5, which suggests it's reasonably faster than the 4GB that was in there, in spite of Memcheck's disappointing looking CAS figure. That said, I'm not sure on what criteria Microsoft measure ram performance. Perhaps I'm just getting a higher score simply because I've gone from 4GB to 8GB.
Obviously I now have return either 1 or both of the sticks, but I'm pondering whether to return to get the faulty one replaced, or return both for a refund and go for some regular 1600MHz DDR3 ram. It all depends if those CAS figures and Mhz figures reported my Memcheck are correct, and if so, whether I can boost them.
I can't find any way of changing the RAM's MHz in the BIOS (Dell Vostro desktop), but judging by what Crucial offers me on its website, in the way of standard ram, my PC is both compatible with 1600Mhz and 1.5v ram. Any ideas?
TIA.
P.S. I'm just running the one working 8GB XMP stick in the PC, I'm not mixing ram with the old 4GB stick that was in there, which I know can hit performance.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram