ABIT BIOS beta 13/ RAM tRef Setting

Found a beta BIOS for the ABIT AW9D and MAX, and it adds in the tRef setting for manually setting RAM timings. Master of None posted on the ABIT forum that he could raise the tRef to achieve higher overclocking, and he was correct... but apparently at a price. I was testing 3dmark05 and 06 for hours last night, and found that while 3dm05 would give me higher scores after a good pump up of the FSB, 3dm06 wouldn't. At 3509MHz, BIOS 12 RAM settings outperformed the new BIOS and upped tRef, even when I jumped up to 3550MHz (approx.); a score of 9694 at 3509MHz vs 9680 at 3550MHz = wth?! Since the tRef is the only thing that's been changed, anyone mind telling me what they know about this setting? My RAM is DDR2-800, SPD=5-5-5-15, set to 4-4-4-12 and a tRef of 36; speed is approx. 395MHz.

Thanks,

TJS

tref was where it was at on A64. Changing this made a helluva lot of difference to your overclock

A bit of info:

TREF is the # of clock cycles between RAM refreshes. (Information in RAM is stored in capacitors and decays/disipates over time.. requiring periodic refresh of information before it disappears)

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