Tweaking 4 DIMMs on the 939 platform

lemonlime

I found myself experiencing a moment of weakness and picked up another pair of OCZ Platinum PC3200 Rev.2 sticks for an awesome price. Thanks again to Airbornflight!

I'm going to track my progress tweaking these DIMMs in this thread. So far, I can tell you that the system was completely unstable and would not post at 1T command rate, however it appeared content as ever with 2T.. as expected. My starting point is going to be what you see in the CPU-Z screenshot below.

I havent tried too many different games yet, but I can tell you that Oblivion does run more smoothly with 2GB of RAM. I've been keeping an eye on my nifty G15 keyboard performance monitor. It was not unusual to see 60+% RAM usage.

More info to come..



Its a full house now!

RWB

I have 4 DIMMs as well with 2GB of RAM, it won't post at 1T timings as well, no matter what I do. Been thinking of buying new ram x2 1GB sticks should allow a post at 1T.

muddocktor

Yeah it will allow running at 1T command rate with 2 X 1GB modules, RWB. I'm presently running my main rig at 250 X 10 and 1:1 on the ram with 3-3-2-8 timings at 1T command rate.

Komete

Do you notice anything slower running in 2t?

RWB

Yup... memory bandwidth is considerably slower... I don't remember how much exactly.

Komete

RWB wrote:

Yup... memory bandwidth is considerably slower... I don't remember how much exactly.

I realize that but can you see the difference say in how snappy windows is or say games may suffer some. I only have 1 gig and I don't notice a difference from 1t to 2t. Then again I'm running near 2.9ghz if that makes a difference.

RWB

Na... windows won't be much faster, but I am sure you can notice the difference in games as the memory bandwidth difference was a few hundred MBps IIRC.

muddocktor

From all I've read, you only lose a few percent speedwise, max. And the extra ram more than makes up the difference when doing stuff that loves a lot of ram. I just like the fact that it's easier to overclock with just 2 dimms compared to 4 dimms.

tmh88

Ok, I should know this by now, but I dont mainly cause I dont do much tweaking with my system. Anyway what do you mean by 1T command rate, and 2T?

lemonlime

So far, I've noticed nothing as far as performance decrease from 1T to 2T. It shows up in benchmarks, but even then its nothing horrific. Playing games is just a lot smoother now. I get a lot less thrashing. I think 2GB at 2T is more useful than 1GB at 1T timings IMO.

Hey, if I want to run some benchmarks, I'll pull the weakest pair out, and run 1T 300MHz etc simple as that.

Overclocking with four dimms has been difficult. The memory controller has gotten very picky now, and is clearly stressed pretty heavily. Lets just say that 300MHz isn't going to happen, even at 2T. I'll post some more progress soon.

muddocktor

lemonlime wrote:

So far, I've noticed nothing as far as performance decrease from 1T to 2T. It shows up in benchmarks, but even then its nothing horrific. Playing games is just a lot smoother now. I get a lot less thrashing. I think 2GB at 2T is more useful than 1GB at 1T timings IMO.

Hey, if I want to run some benchmarks, I'll pull the weakest pair out, and run 1T 300MHz etc simple as that.

Overclocking with four dimms has been difficult. The memory controller has gotten very picky now, and is clearly stressed pretty heavily. Lets just say that 300MHz isn't going to happen, even at 2T. I'll post some more progress soon.

And the catch 22 of 2 GB of ram is that there are no 1 GB sticks on the market that will give a reliable 300 MHz ram speed either. My Mushkins can't for sure. But at least you can run 1T command rate.

tmh88, it's a setting in bios usually under the ram timings section. It might also be listed as CPC on or CPC off and maybe other listings in bios. From what I understand, it regulates access timing between the cpu and ram (correct me if I'm off the mark, LL).

jradmin

If you were using an ASUS board, you would see a really big difference between having 2 gigs in 4 slots and having 2 gigs in 2 slots. Asus boards are terriable at trying to handle all 4 slots filled with DDR400 and 400 and not 333. I have 2 gigs of plat rev. 2 that I had on both a delux and premium A8N board and they gave me nothing but problems with timings.

TheLostSwede

I agree,

Some boards just forces the ramcontroller to DDR333 with 4 sticks installed and the Asus NF4 boards is a perfect example of that. Only the DFI expert can do 1T with 4 dimms with some tweaking.