So much for 1:1 fsb:dram ratio being the best

dipstick

I've been playing around with some bios settings and have noticed something very interesting. Being told that 1:1 is the best way to OC ones fsb and ram I was very surprised. Anyways these are some settings and numbers I got from Everest.

430MHz fsb - 430MHz ram(860) - 3.44GHz cpu clock (1:1)
Memory Read- 7498MB/s
Memory Latency - 70.9ns

430MHz fsb - 516MHz ram(1032) - 3.44GHz cpu clock (5:6)
Memory Read - 8986MB/s
Memory Latency - 54.2ns

While I can somewhat understand the higher bandwidth -its still higher than I thought it would be- I was very surprised by the reduced latency. I honestly thought that 1:1 would provide the absolute lowest latency due to working in harmony but I was very wrong. The above may not seem as much but its a noticeable improvement all around. Anyways, I thought I would share my findings for those with the same mindset as the improvement is worthy

PangingJr

swimtech

I absolutely did too - intriguing. Thanks for the heads up!

The real question though is how does it affect application or gaming perfomance though. Is the processor able to incorporate the memory packets out of sync to the advantage of the application at that particular ratio? Noticed PangingJr has got a 5:4 thing going above - even more out of sync...

Lowfat

1:1 was only better during the DDR1 days and all memory ratios weren't upward ratios. With DDR2 things changed as we could finally have ram that was faster than the FSB of the CPU.

PangingJr

try 4:5 if your BIOS and RAM permits, the letency results should be even more improved.

dipstick

Very nice Panging, I've always loved the P35 the most and it never fails to prove it. That's a wicked oc all around.
I've been playing some CoD4 and Crysis to test stability and while I can't say I notice much of an fps increase they do seem quite a bit smoother. Things just seem more fluent and quicker to respond all around.
I should also have mentioned that maybe the strap has something to do with it. I kept it at 400 but 333 seems better and allows for many more memory clock options. Silly me lol
This is the article I read that led me to test this out, and while I understand little from it, it seems to have pointed me in the right direction.

ChaosMinionX

True story, and for those with a Maximus Formula flashed to a Rampage Formula, it gets even better

I will post some more info shortly.. finishing up benchmarking.

Zelig

Good article there.

On the AMD side, they eliminated the performance hit of not running 1:1 when they moved to the on-die memory controller... not much overclocking happening with their chips at the moment though.

swimtech

That was exactly what I needed to read. I missed it back in January...

Judas

I'm likely to start putting alot of this ocing into more practice soon as my reaper ocz memory arrives.

Neshi

A little free time is all I need before I push my cpu to a 3.6ghz

But as this thread is about memory, I just want to put in a little question.
what is better, pushing latencies as low as possible on, lets say 800mhz sticks, or getting as high Mhz as possible without loosening the latencies too much?

and what about the "secondary" latencies? How do you know how low they can go or is it so negligible (only important for synthetic benchmarks) that it is best left on "auto" and you just mess with the five normal ones. (like the 4-4-4-12-2T)

ChaosMinionX

@ Pangingjr


You could probably get more performance out of your RAM by lowering the FSB and tuning the TRD more.

PangingJr

my P35-DS4 is kinda old now, i have been very hard to it for many things and for a long time already, and this board's chipset is not optimized enough for me for my overclocking anymore. i will get a fresh motherboard soon.
but i will not give away this board just yet, it's a good board.
anyways, i will try to do better on a new board next time.

ChaosMinionX

Get a maximus formula, and flash it to a rampage formula....you will like what you see.

kris23

should i flash mine?

PangingJr

well i just changed my mind again i have a good relationship with Gigabyte board for now.
i actually thought about not buying another Gigabyte board around this time, 3 of its BIOS's came out no good in the last few months.

i think i know about the Asus board, its overclockability, and the rest of their good ones, and all. i am not blind, i just don't like to pay too much into something that i won't use it long (i've to pay quite a bit more than you for Asus boards).
i will want to play with a new board again when P45/ICH10R chipset is out. right now Gigabyte is cheaper, the Intel ICH RAID on Gigabyte board never fails me at all, this is another thing that makes me like using Gigabyte's, and the rest still gives what i need and it is a quite exceptional.

ChaosMinionX

well....it voids your 3year warranty should you kill your board. So if your feeling daring sure, or if you can afford to replace it.

If none of the above, dont do it

kris23

cant i flash it back?

dipstick

i would go for the faster ram but I would also try to keep them at a 5-5-5 at the most. Out of all the timings I would say that tRD is the most important but that comes down to the board itself and the ram. of course the best is fast and low latency ram but that is the worst for the wallet.

@Kris. I say its worth the flash. There is tons of info here and there is now even a way to go flash back in case you have to rma(though depending on the reason to rma it will be tough if the board is dead lol). You can also find the 0219 bios in there which is very nice and not available from asus yet.

PangingJr

is this one better? well i think my board is still working okay.

PL7 at 526 FSB

ChaosMinionX

Much better

kris23

thats alot of MBs a second.... so CMX, cant i flash the BIOS back to Maximus if i find something isnt right with the board? as long as it isnt completely dead?

PangingJr

i could hardly get a PL8 last week, as you can see the Copy results on the far above one were not so good, and i don't add FSB voltage at all this time, just add MCH +0.3 (1.55V).
this board is like 2 years now i can't remember, lol, but it has been booting with different CPU's and RAM's clock speeds, with 4 or 5 CPU's now, many memory kits, all kind of clock speeds for like 1000's of time booting this board. i guess or i know i just get tired of using it and want a fresh chipset board.

ChaosMinionX

There is a way to flash back to Maximus, but it causes your windows install to go bad