RAM running slow?

Bob_Harris

I bought quad core upgrade for myself recently, consisting of:

Phenom II X4 965
MSI 770-C45
Crucial DDR3 BallistiX 1333MHz 3GB CL7 (link)

Below you can see what speeds the RAM is running at.

Should the DRAM frequency not be 1333MHz? Or is it (668*2) = ~1333Mhz, is that how dual channel RAM works?

Should it now be CL7, not CL9?

I've loaded the "optimized defaults in the BIOS", I could set the timings manually but I am wondering did I get the correct type of RAM or not.

Deano12345

Yeah,DDR is precisly that.Dual Data Rate.Your Ram is actually (very slighly) overclocked.

Optimised defaults will load the ram too what it thinks are the best timings,you can set them yourself to what they are specced to on the box

Bob_Harris

I tried setting the timings to 7-7-7-24 but it prevented the computer from booting at all, so I had to manually wipe the CMOS settings by using a jumper on the mobo.

Bob_Harris

If I set the RAM voltage to 1.650v and the timings to 7-7-7-24 should all be OK?

If I was running an Intel processor with this ram I could just choose the XMP profile in the BIOS, but I read somewhere that I can set it manually to the above values on a non XMP compatible mobo.

RAM is currently at 1.5v, will I dive in an change the voltage or should I just live with CL9?

CrinkElite

I'm no expert on this stuff but your ram is rated for 1.65 so it will not hurt to give it that.
Honestly though, I wouldn't worry about it. You will see almost no gain by tightening your timings. If i were you I'd leave it until you actually need a performance boost.

Deano12345

Yeah,the AMD systems dont seem to benefit from tight timings,the only systems that do are odd ones like mine .P45 + DDR3

Bob_Harris

Thanks for the replies. I upped the voltage and the lower timings worked, but it made no difference in benchmarks. So I just uppped the freq of the ram instead which gave good results.