Looking for memory advice

[Frunk]

Hey folks,

I am a first time poster and relatively new to this whole extreme OC thang! So please be gentle.

Phil is currently building me a rather silly case. Baker Extreme Mach II (on a FX55) and a water cooling system for mobo (A8N-SLI Deluxe) and GFX cards (2x6800U).

I have got the rig up and running in a temporary case to test things out and get my base benchmarks for a stock system:

Bechwarks: 1002 BIOS, 71.24 (Unofficial Beta) NVidia Drivers, SLI On. Memory 2T.2-2-2-5. Stock settings/No OC

3DMark2001SE = 28,421 (look like this is CPU limited)

3DMark2003 = 21,941

3DMark2005 = 10,000 (on the nose!)

Aquamark3 = 83,500

Not too shabby I thought!

A few caveats around those figures - I moved to that NVidia driver as it seemed to work best with the SLI setup and HL2 The official non-beta release was a pain to do SLI with, the official beta fixed this but HL2 was corrupting... so onto the crazy, silly one. The 71.24 driver seemed to boost the benchmarks about 5% but probably has some ****ty quality issues that I have not spotted, yet. The 1003 BIOS also did not allow SLI to kick in so back to 1002 (still to try the 1004 beta).

As you see I want this to be a gaming rig, am interested in 3D marks - not PI tests. The above tests were done with 2Gb of Corsair PC3200XLPRO with timings 2-2-2-5. As there is 2Gb I was running 2T and not 1T.

So my query comes with the OCing of this kit when Phil's new box arrives. What memory is best for OCing on the MachII setup?

My choices appear to be:

1. Stay with what I have DDR 400, CAS 2

2. Get Corsair PC4400, DDR 550, CAS 2.5, 2.5-4-4-8 (Should be good for 275MHz bus with tightish timings)

3. Get AData PC4800, DDR600 CAS 3, 3-4-4-8 I think (Thoretically up to 300MHz with laxer latency)

​

I realise they are all SAMSUNG TCCD chips and probably underneath identical - just quoted differently depending upon what the manufacturere is trying tro selll them on. But your thoughts, experience and advice would be appreciated. Also up for a general chit-chat about the system if ya want! But no picies, yet... not until Phil is ready to unveil his masterpiece

Thanks for reading,

Frunk

 

[standin wave]

But no picies, yet... not until Phil is ready to unveil his masterpiece

Thanks for reading,

Frunk

Hi Frunk and welcome to EP forum - the system sounds as though it'll be a great looker - but dont give Phil excuses to 'unveil his masterpiece' m8 - they are strictly for the 'Jokes' section

Ive got 1GB of 4400 TWIN1024 Corsair, so will be watching technical replies myself

sw

 

[maverik-sg1]

Hi,

Welcome to the forums. Firstly nice rig.

Here is the beneift of expereince on the A8N-Sli MOBO.

Firstly update to 1003 BIOS.

You take a massive performance hit running 2T, but A8N-Sli MOBO has a BIOS issue where it wont run 1t with ram above 235FSB.

So you have to set you ram to 333mhz in the BIOS until the BIOS update fixes the problem. This will perform around 5% better than running 1:1 with 2T timings. This should fix SLi problem too with 1003 BIOS.

Gskill LE or Corsair XMS4400C25 are probably the best available the ADATA ram needs relaxed timings (even at slower clocks) to run properly, the others run lower speeds at tighter timings.

3dmark2001SE does not use Sli (except for Nature test) so dont expect to go much higher than a single 6800Ultra with FX55. But watch it go in 3dm03 and 05.

You will struggle to overclock 2gig of ram, they just dont like it and they overclock not as good as you would like (causes stability issues with CPU and VGA too).

If you are going to overclock the CPU, you might want to run 2gig at 200mhz 1:1 with CPU HTTx4, 2T timings and whack the multiplier up to overclock the FX55.

Thats about all I have learned in the 10 days and three Mobo's I have gone through.

Good luck with your system, be intersting to know how far you can overcock with 2gig.

Check out my thread for more information http://www.extremeprometeia.com/forum/showthread.php?p=11278#post11278

Cheers

Mav

 

[Frunk]

Hi Mav & Standin Wave

Cheers for the warm welcome...

You take a massive performance hit running 2T, but A8N-Sli MOBO has a BIOS issue where it wont run 1t with ram above 235FSB.

So you have to set you ram to 333mhz in the BIOS until the BIOS update fixes the problem. This will perform around 5% better than running 1:1 with 2T timings. This should fix SLi problem too with 1003 BIOS.

Thanks... will try that... maybe the new 1004-001 will help too. But the performance was not really an issue for the "vanilla system". Was going to wait for the coolling before doing much in the way of performance tuning. I thought it was the 2Gig RAM that forced the 2T timings.

Gskill LE or Corsair XMS4400C25 are probably the best available the ADATA ram needs relaxed timings (even at slower clocks) to run properly, the others run lower speeds at tighter timings.

If you are going to overclock the CPU, you might want to run 2gig at 200mhz 1:1 with CPU HTTx4, 2T timings and whack the multiplier up to overclock the FX55.

Good luck with your system, be intersting to know how far you can overcock with 2gig.

The 2Gig is silly I know but is what is starting to be needed for the new gen of games. What I will do is have 2 gig in there for standard gaming and drop it down to 1gig with the OCZ RAM booster for doing OC benchmarks - means I can pick my two best DIMMs and get some sweet benchmarks.

You seem to be suggesting I go for the Corsair 4400C2.5 and keep the FSB to around 250MHz with a high multiplier? Sound fair?

Or even keep the current 3200C2 memory and keep the bus at no more that 220-230MHz with and even higher multiplier?

Frunk

 

[maverik-sg1]

Yep high multiplier will give you top performance but get as much FSB from the ram and mem in 1T as tight as you can.

OCZ booster is not compatable with A8n-Sli - I checked as I have one too.

Just another note I think that TCCD does not react well to higher volts, look for OCZ VE Series for that.

Don't woory about 2gig with Sli you got 512mb of texture memory, plus next gen graphics will have 512MB