Slow memory benchmarks

MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
edited December 2007 in Hardware
Last night I removed my Intel D975XBX2 motherboard and replaced it with a Gigabyte X38-DQ6. I have 4 GB of OCZ ATI Crossfire RAM. It is a solid set of RAM, but was never a great performer. It runs fine @ 4-4-4-12 800Mhz, but its bandwidth has been weak. It would Sandra at 5600 on the 975 chipset, but is only getting about 4800 on the X-38 chipset. Way down from optimum of 6700-6800. I have it running at [EMAIL="4-4-4-12@800"]4-4-4-12@800[/EMAIL] at 2Vdc. Even tried turning on the auto overclock stuff, but it didn't help.

Now the machine seems very snappy over the old motherboard so I was kinda thinking it was just the bench mark wasn't getting good results on the new chipset, but then I ran the Vista index and it dropped from 5.8 to 5.4 so it IS SLOWER.

Any ideas ? Or heard any thing else like this with an X-38 and DDR2?

I changed the board because I'm taking out my 2 X1950Pros and putting in 2 3870/512s in Crossfire. Wanted to give em full X16 bandwidth, but maybe it was a bad choice of trying to stay with the DDR2. Just didn't want dump even more money on DDR3 cause they think that stuff is carved out of gold :)

Crysis IS going to run on high settings :wink:

Comments

  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited December 2007
    5.4's not bad...You act like if you lose just the smallest bit of memory bandwidth the world is going to end. And yeah. Memory specs will be variant on the board with intel. AMD's stay pretty much the same since the processor is also the memory controller.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited December 2007
    What is your command timing set to Missileman? The default between your two boards could be different. 1T (CPC=on) does not always work well on intel boards, but you could give it a shot. The amount of bandwidth you lost seems to jive with moving from 1T to 2T. I'll admit I'm rusty with intel tweaking though, still trying to get more out of my Q6600 and D9 as well.
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited December 2007
    I said to hell with it and ordered 4 sticks of Crucial Ballistix 1066 with D9s. They should be able to get a more normal bandwidth.

    Both boards were running 2T so it wasn't that. That setting makes a huge difference on AMD systems, but not so much so on Intel because of their memory acceleration technology. Was PATS a few chipsets back, and now it uses EPP which is the same as the Nvidia SLI ready systems use.

    My concern wasn't the score going down so much as understanding why. since I was a nuclear missile test engineer I have the "bad" habit of nothing going unexplained in detail. No glitch goes unanswered.

    It is also a bit disconcerting when you spend a lot of money to update and maximize your system to find out it is running slower than your old one.

    I will take the Ballistix tomorrow and set it to 800 and see what its bandwidth is. It has the EPP chips on it with the extra data that the X38 chipset wants so hopefully it will get back up into the normal range for this chipset at least.

    The board continues to run without a hickup otherwise and feels much faster that the other motherboard did so I'll just have to wait and see.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited December 2007
    Good luck. I have 2GB of G.SKILL 8000, and getting my board+ram to do 500MHz has been a nightmare. The RAM will do 1:2 (266), but not 1:1 500. High quantity/high-density DIMM population is a PITA.
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited December 2007
    Yeah it can be a problem with 4 sticks.

    These 4 ran fine in my other board and are also running solid in this one.

    I'm just a bit concerned though about this memory. It is way below the norm since all the benched and reviews show it doing 6800-7200 on bandwidth.

    I tried removing 2 sticks, tried running 2 and 4 sticks of some Adata RAM in the same category and they went down even lower. I'm also tried single channel and single stick. Not a big loss going to single channel. Dropped down to 4200 from 4900.

    I'm hoping to get it back up into normal range even with 2 sticks so at least I know it ain't some strange issue with the bios or a bad/weak memory controller. I have seen some really strange things with this stuff over the years. :scratch:
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited December 2007
    Well I got the 4 new sticks of Crucial Ballistix 1066 in.

    They are significantly faster. Up to 5400 in Sandra running off the EPP/SPD.

    One thing I noticed is the board read the EPP and set voltage to 2.2Vdc on it's own. Nice for a change. It booted first try.

    I downclocked the RAM to 4-4-4-10 [EMAIL="-1T@800"]-1T@800[/EMAIL]. Still only got about 5200 on Sandra. Vista is back up to 5.6. Set em to the same except 2T and it dropped down to 5100. Not much change.

    Turns out the chipset on 800 should do about 51-5200 with a 2.4Ghz processor.

    Set em back up to 5-5-5-15 -2T @ 1100 and getting around 5500 which is ballpark for DDR2.

    All 4 sticks are stable and very HOT. Kinda wonder how long before they are taking the trip to Crucial. I'm really thinking about doind a voltage override and turning it down a bit. They run a LOT cooler at 2.0 and are just as stable.

    Looks like good RAM at least so far. Gonna keep tweaking a bit more and see how they go.
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited December 2007
    /clap for Micron! Way to support the ONLY US based Memory company....and Me. ;)
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited December 2007
    That's why I like the Gemini 2, it cools everything on one half of the board.
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