i know ive got a couple of posts aready but, ive heard allot about people ajusting there ram timings for better performance.

This is completly new to me and im wondering how ya go about doing it, whats good and whats bad etc....

All i know is that at the moment ive got a oc of 212 bus on a a7v600 with a mem ratio of 1:1 which i know means ram running same as the fsb. but what does the .3.3.3.2 (not actual figures just for example) mean?

Ive got 2 sticks of 512mb 3200 ddr ram, unfortunatly i dont know the makes both baught at different times and one of sticks doesnt identify a name in cpuid. I got them based on the speed ie pc3200 400 mhz bus speed before i really knew anything about overclocking lol and thought there all the same. How wrong could i be lol

and help apprecuated

thanks
Newbie just trying to lean some new tricks !!!lol

ASUS A7V600
1024 PC 3200 DDR
XFX 6600GT oc 550 gpu 1120 mem
XP BARTON-M 2500 212x11.5=2438 mhz
80 GIG SATA+IDE
400W PSU

Tightening your ram timings is like tuning your gas pedal for faster response, there not much gained as you begin the travel. Push more for system stability.

B4 you criticize a bigger man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

Yea, although a lot of people swear by tighter RAM timings, in most cases, the performance difference between slowest & fastest timings is minimal, & it may come at the expense of system stability. It doesn't hurt to experiment though.

Tom's Hardware did an article on it & ran a number of benchtest comparisons. Have a look:

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040119/index.html

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz
512MB PC3200
Asus Ti4800SE 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro

A few post ago I had a conversation about RAM, I can only sum up what I said by reminding all the ram forcers out there:
A nanosecond (ns or nsec) is one billionth (10-9) of a second and is a common measurement of read or write access time to random access memory.

Only a benchmarking prog will reveal such differences, if you really need to get your sys down to fighting for a few ns, with all the problems that could cause, well, good luck.

AMD64Bit 3800+ Socket 939
WinXP Pro.
Nvidia:6800GT
Dane Electronic Pro. Dual 1024MB 400MHz RAM
Tagan 480Watt PSU: 28Amps on +12volt rail.
Asus A8V Deluxe "WiFi" M/Board - Coolmaster A

In your case, no, it won't make barely any difference, but for those of you who are saying in a blanked statement this is true for all PC's, that's simply not the case.

With Athlon 64's, there can be a noticeable difference with tightening the timings.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2330&p=4

Look at the last chart there. Tightening the timings yielded a 12% increase from 3-6-6-10 to 2-2-2-10, and 9% out of that 12% came simply from 3-6-6-10 to 3-3-3-10!

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

Hero,

If you notice, all the previous responces had the same underlying message and it was "not to sacrifice stability for nanosecond performance gains". Firetrap you are free to tweak your ram timings to your hearts desire.

One thing is clear though the time spent on the timing tweak is not directly proportional to the expected gains from it.

B4 you criticize a bigger man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, you're a mile away, and you have his shoes.

This looks like an in depth article about RAM in general, page 5 talks about timings. Enjoy.

My timings are 2-3-3-7, and I suffer from no stability issues.

Of course, my RAM is rated to do this.

My point was several people in this thread spoke of tweaking in it resulted in insignificant performance gains. Just showing that in the right system 9-12% in my book is significant.

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

Heropsycho

Same timings as me, I'm running my CL2.5 DDR400 @ CL2 and synced with my FSB :D

I can't say I notice any stability issues or huge performance gains lol :P

Zee.

AMD Athlon 2800+ barton @ 12.5 X 176 : 2200mhz
512Mb Corsair RAM
MSI KT6 Delta mobo
Leadtek AGP 6600 gt 128Mb
120Gb Seagate HDD

Yes, and as I said, it's got to be something like an Athlon 64 in order to see a significant performance gain. You and I don't gall in that category.

I did benchmark it one time to see if it actually helped. I'm running a Barton at 200MHz bus along with my CPU on an Nforce2 Ultra 400 chipset mobo. I gained somewhere along the line of 1-3% going from 3-4-4-10 to 2-3-3-7. Considering I spent about $230 at the time for this RAM when I could have gotten CAS2 RAM for $150 then, it obviously wasn't worth it, and why I don't recommend to people generally to spend significant amounts of money to get low latency RAM. However, these days you can get CAS2.5 RAM for about the same as CAS3, so I do recommend CAS2.5.

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

"My timings are 2-3-3-7, and I suffer from no stability issues.

Of course, my RAM is rated to do this."

You're really not "tweaking" your timings at all. I was referring to stability issues with RAM that doesn't have such good timings to begin with...like PC3200 with a rating of 3-4-4-8.

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8 x 210MHz
512MB PC3200
Asus Ti4800SE 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro

Heropsycho

I looked a the figures and yes, 12% looks good. But, in real terms i.e. what "you" would see, as opposed to a benchmarking prog is not always worth the probs someone may have to achieve that.

E.g. Say you lat can give you 60ns, on an increase of 12% that would raise that to 67.2ns, sounds great, but in real terms what you gain is 7.2ns, i.e. 7.2 billionths of a second gain. I know to the ram forcers that is worth it, I personally don't. I only have to go to hundreds of past posts to see that ram clocking is a major cause of sys instability. I know it can be done, I have done it in the past, and stability wasn't an issue. All I was trying to say was, is it worth the risk of instability for such a small gain? Other aspects of O/cing can and do give gains that have a more noticable effect. But each to there own.

MMM, back to the beer :) nuff said.

AMD64Bit 3800+ Socket 939
WinXP Pro.
Nvidia:6800GT
Dane Electronic Pro. Dual 1024MB 400MHz RAM
Tagan 480Watt PSU: 28Amps on +12volt rail.
Asus A8V Deluxe "WiFi" M/Board - Aquagate

Quicksilver,

Read the link I provided. That was a 9-12% jump in performance in an actual game, not just in some theoretical benchmark. I understand the math behind all that stuff, but in the end, what I really want to know is how much does it actually help in real world applications. If my game can run 9-12% better due to tightening my RAM timings without reducing stability or damaging hardware, I see that as worth messing with, and incidentally, this is why we also overclock beyond manufacturers' ratings on CPU clock, bus speed, etc., isn't it?

Jam, with respect of tweaking or not, I was merely pointing out that on some systems the reduced timings CAN yield a significant performance gain, so it may be a worthy pursuit, provided you have the right equipment (good quality RAM, even if it isn't rated to do better timings). If your RAM isn't rated to do so, manipulating the timings is a similar procedure as overclocking (change a timing, test, if it works, reduce it again, test, etc.), and is subjected to virtually the same risks (voiding of warranty, very small risk of permanent damage if done right, reduced system stability).

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"