RAM and OC'ing.

Sharkims · Jul 28, 2003, 04:47 PM

Is it more diffitcult to get a bigger OC with more RAM?

~~craig588~~ · Jul 28, 2003, 05:18 PM

In short yes. I could go into a long explanation of why if you really want me to, but it would take my time.

Sharkims · Jul 28, 2003, 05:23 PM

Nah you don't need to, I was just wanting to make sure. I guess my OC is a bit capped with 3gigs of RAM. :-P

studbagel9 · Jul 28, 2003, 05:28 PM

Could you go into the long explanation for me?

tek · Jul 28, 2003, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by studbagel9
Could you go into the long explanation for me?

Yeah do the same for me... cause that makes no sense.. more RAM = more OC, I dont think so...

-tek

~~craig588~~ · Jul 28, 2003, 07:39 PM

With more ram you will run into higher latencys because of the larger amout of space that the electricity needs to travel. With just one single sided stick the electricty needs to travel the shortest distance and will have the lowest possibility of errors. When you add more sticks you increase the amount of space that the signals need to travel and more space can increase the possibility of errors and the latencys. Not only that they need to be syncronised so with more sticks you incrase the possibilty that the signals won't match up. With one stick you won't need to deal with that. Running in dual channel mode can usually provide better performance that the few extra MHz you will get out of your FSB by using only one stick. Running with multiple sticks in dual channel mode will hurt your overclocking performance more than the extra ram will help your systems performance. Using one sided ram can be faster because it only needs to access half as many chips. Higher density chips usually don't have an affect on performance, only the space that can be fit on them, so a 512MB stick will still overclock better than 2 256MB sticks and probably the same as a single 256MB stick. Not all ram is exactly the same so even if you had 2 idenical ram sticks from the same manufacturer and rated for the same voltage, speed and timing they might not perform equally.

Just a little bit of effort was required for me to write this up so I would appreaciate if you read it in full.

The_Neon_Cowboy · Jul 28, 2003, 09:10 PM

i dunno carig there are ram kits with specail spd's to combat those very such issues .... i personally think it depend more on the ram your useing though... someone with 1 x512 or 2x 512 the 1 512 mabe overclockable to a higer rate ... but the there is only half as much ... to me is like haveing a corvet with turbo and a 1 gallon gas tank ... it dosent take long till it runs out... many people might get away with it but some power users might not....

for example in my rig .. i have 2x512 geil ultra low latency ddr sticks that i could oveclock them to my board explodes and yet my ram would just be reaching thier stock speed... but i understand to that alot of people didnt opt for the more expensive ram.... i can see the diffrence between 512 and 1 gb asclear as night and day tho....

yet if i had a 1024mb ram sick my system would lose duel channel... not to mention it has been said many times the the largers chips are often Slower than the maller ones.... it just depends on te setup and kind of ram ....

for exaple on a rambus system i would completly agree with you crag... but hey every one has thier own opinions thats part of what were here for

ps.

also i had cases were i got higer o/c out of less sticks of ram but that was later to be proven the other sticks by them selfs did not o/c as good as that one stick that did alot better... a few trys and i was able to get as high of over clock as i got with the 1 stick

~~craig588~~ · Jul 28, 2003, 09:21 PM

I said that the benefits of a dual channel system outwheigh those of using one stick of ram just for overclocking.

You said that smaller chips were faster than larger chips, did you mean chips that were physicly smaller with higher desnities, or chips that had a lower capacity? I agree with the higher density, but not with the capacity.

Sharkims · Jul 29, 2003, 04:19 AM

The board that I will be installing tomorrow, supports 6-Dual-Channel. So I don't even think it will be a problem for me.

The_Neon_Cowboy · Jul 29, 2003, 11:49 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by craig588
I said that the benefits of a dual channel system outwheigh those of using one stick of ram just for overclocking.

You said that smaller chips were faster than larger chips, did you mean chips that were physicly smaller with higher desnities, or chips that had a lower capacity? I agree with the higher density, but not with the capacity.

alot of people have been saying they get higer overclocks with ram of lesser capacitys..... thats just what i herd... over the years... who knows for sure .. eveyones setup and experiances are diffrent

my best guess is the extra checksum bit becuose the large chips like 1 gb have to have ecc/registerd ... that might have something to do with it ....

mike2h · Jul 30, 2003, 11:16 PM

if you are really interested in the differences between single/dual channel, stick density, & populating all the slots try this from anandtech - http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.html?i=1839 .