No announcement yet.

A7N8X and 3200 RAM best settings?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A7N8X and 3200 RAM best settings?

    My system:
    ASUS A7N8X deluxe
    AMD Athlon 2500+ (Barton) with SLK-800 copper heatsink and 80mm 4800rpm fan.
    Pair of 256MB Corsair PC3200 XMS
    ATi 9700Pro
    Seagate Barracuda SATA

    I'm running my 2500 now at 2.2GHz (200FSB, 11x, 1.68V) keeping it in the low 40s temp even when stressed. I figure I still have some room to play.

    If I try to mess with memory timings I end up having to manually reset my CMOS just to get the damn thing to boot me into the BIOS. I leave the memory set to Auto and it is running very stable.

    A lot of A7N8X users have been running the FSB at higher than 200MHz. I'm wondering why they do that and what are the advantages? I'm thinking if my RAM is 400MHz DDR it will run best on a 200MHz FSB setting on the mobo right? If I go over 200MHz will the RAM try to match it or step down to a lower setting when the BIOS is left to auto?

    Also what is the best way to verify the speed the RAM is actually running after booting into Windows?

  • #2
    its best to run your ram sync to your fsb speed so if you decide to run your cpu at 200mhz run the ram at 400mhz for best preformance. Going over 200mhz on my rig (its about the same as yours except i got pc2700 ram, diff. card and hdd) showed little or no preformance increase the best preformance increase was noticed at around 190mhz after that its better but not much for any one to notice. To get more preformance you can up the multiplyer a 0.5 and see what happens. also in the bios keep the ram set at 100% just to make sure that its sync and not on auto good luck

    Comment


    • #3
      thanks.....

      Comment


      • #4
        OK....After about two hours reading through the forums at Corsair's website I finally managed to get my pair of 3200C2 modules to run in sync with my bus set at 200MHz.

        First I backed off on the CPU clock speed to default and set my bus to 166.

        I set the memory to run at 100% with the bus then changed all the timing values to these:
        CAS Latency: 2
        RAS to CAS delay: 2
        RAS Precharge: 2
        Active to Precharge delay: 5

        Once I got it running in sync with my CPU at 166 I upped the bus back to 200MHz and lowered the clock multiplier to keep things stable.

        I also upped the DDR Voltage to 2.8 but then backed off to 2.7 once I got it running. Corsair seems to be very comfortable with running their RAM at 2.7V so I am too.

        For a while I thought maybe I had some bad modules.

        Patiently, I then started upping my CPU back up to 2200MHz at 200FSB and 11x multiplier. I actually tried running at 12X but got a blue screen after Windows booted so I figure I found my upper limit. The system runs nice and cool and stable at 2200MHz, the exact specs of the 3200+.

        WOW! what a difference these settings made to RAM speed. I went up from a memory bandwidth of around 2100-2200 to a peak measured memory bandwidth of 3086MB/s! I am pretty happy with that. : party ha : party ha :cheers: : peace2: :thumb:

        I expect these modules may handle higher bus speeds and I may try pushing them further after a while. I'd be interested in hearing what luck others have had with these Corsair modules.

        Comment

        Working...
        X