I', no expert, but here goes:

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Yes, an increase

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With the right speed DDR3, massive

Doh, i meant the memory is running at 720mhz.

The CPU is set with a FSB of 360.

I agree that there might be a slight improvement with faster DDR2.

DDR3 is quite expensive, but if the results are better it might be an option.

Anybody using DDR3 ram?

Cheers

rikm12345 wrote on Mar 20^th, 2008 at 7:11am:


Your currrent ram is underclocked, it's got more potential, you aren't getting performance because your not set up correctly?

I don't know your specs or your overclock, but why is the ram running so slow?

400mhz FSB x 8 cpu multiplier = 3.2ghz cpu and DDR800, it should look something like that for a C2D ..... and to me, that's an average CD2 "stock speed" that an overclocker would expect on his first boot. Pushing fsb to 500 with 1:1 ratio gives 4ghz CPU and DDR1000 ram ...... Some decent PC6400 runs happily at 1000mhz, so......
......what kind of overclock did you have in mind with faster ram than you have now?

A 9x cpu multi would give 3.6ghz cpu speed with 400mhz FSB speed and PC6400 running stock speed 1:1 ..... so what's the point of faster ram as long as the PC6400 has reasonably tight timings?

This assumes you chose a cpu with an adequate multiplier range.

Sure, you can run the ram faster on a ratio, but you won't see amazing performance benefits from it, at least not that I'm aware of.

My old DDR1 in the spec below trounces the majority of C2D systems as far as memory bandwidth is concerned, it has extremely low latency and timings and compares to more "advanced" DDR types in real world usage.





While DDR2 and DDR3 are progressions of DDR technology, they don't mean huge real world performance gains over DDR1. It's also about chipset utilisation and architecture and how the architecture responds to ram technologies.

Memory bandwidth used to bottleneck the CPU in the "bad old days" of personal computing. Since then, we moved from memory saturation to memory surplus as far as required bandwidth is concerned. The relatively small ram technology improvements that have come to market in recent times are providing benefits for marketing ram, and not particularly for the benefit of power users of PC's.

Don't believe the hype.

Only bump voltages if required, don't do it as a "precaution".

I often think people are overvolting when they shouldn't be, and the extra volts may give them some stability when in fact, another incorrect setting (like ram timings not quite right) may in fact be the culprit, and upping voltages is masking the real problem.

I edited my above post to include some pics if you want to read it again.

rikm12345 wrote on Mar 20^th, 2008 at 9:39pm:


Better ram will net you the least bang for buck of any upgrade option. The money would be better spent towards a nice LCD screen or sound system IMHO.

I often preach buying decent ram, but there comes a point when it's just overkill.

I would only buy expensive (DDR3 or DDR2-1066+) if you already have a massive budget and are planning on massive overclocking at a 1:1 ratio. Other than that - DDR2-800 all the way. It's cheap and fast.

_________

If the memory speed is strange, and it's always been running like that, then I would highly recommend you start from the start - who knows what memory settings are strange. Your Q6600 should have a 266.66 FSB and a multiplyer of 9 for 2.4ghz.

Grab the OCZ Box and look on the back, on the bar code or similar, there should be a product code... R22GK800L, or something. CPU-Z can be INCORRECT, so don't skimp and use CPU-Z. Google the product code, and go to the OCZ product page. Find the exact speed, timings and voltage it's designed for, write it down.

Now go into BIOS. Multiplyer to 9. FSB to 266. Memory to those timings and voltage. On my board the frequency of the memory is based off the FSB through a ratio, the 'system memory multiplyer', it sounds as if yours is similar but the terminology is probably diferant. If you're using DDR2-800 then set that memory multiplyer to three. 266 x 3 = 800. DDR2-667. 266 x 2.5 = 667... ect. So for you, set it to three.



With everything running at the RATED speed, at the RATED timings and the RATED voltage. Now you can resume overclocking. However, at a 360 FSB with the memory multiplayer at three, it will be running at almost 1.1ghz, and I don't think it will be abled to handle that. You may have to drop it to 2.5. 900mhz should work fine. Or do what congo said, 8 x 400 = 3.2ghz. 400 x 2 = 800mhz... or 9 x 360 = 3.24ghz. 360 x 2.5 = 900mhz.