O/Cing Dominator PC2 8500 RAM

[KentuckyRanger]

OK, here we go, LOL!

I'm having problems dealing with my RAM and windows Vista experiance rating.

I know it's something stupid because my Rig is running great, but I only get a 5.6 rating on Ram when everything else is at 5.9

 

I guess I'm letting Bill Gates get under my Skin so to speak...

 

I've got everything set right, I think, but I keep getting this migrain thinking that this awesome RAM is running slower than it should be.

The timming is at 5,5,5,15 and the voltage was at 2.1 (I was only getting a 5.4 RAM rating), then after I stepped up the voltage to 2.3 it went up to 5.6

 

I'm not an avid O/C geek and I don't want to burn up 4 Sticks of Ram over something stupid like impressing Bill Gates...

 

I've read that at 2.1V these Sticks have a tendancy to run slower, even though all the timmings are correct.

 

Right now I'm at a perfect 1:1 at 1066MHz for RAM and CPU but I figured that increasing the Voltage has helped the RAM work more efficiently and was wondering what others thought as to Voltage, speed and just how high you can safely take it.

[boogieman]

Careful with ram voltage on the 680i. They have been known to eat ram. I would stick with the 2.1 volts.

[KentuckyRanger]

Careful with ram voltage on the 680i. They have been known to eat ram. I would stick with the 2.1 volts.

 

I've read all the horor stories about over cloking on the 680i and trust me, that's one of my biggest concerns and why I'm staying away from extreme over Clocking.

With my electronics background I know that just 1 Volt can really impact such sensitive things as RAM and IC Chips no matter what their purpous, that's why I just wanted some feedback about what I've heard on the dominator series of RAM.

They've built so much headroom into them that you almost have to push the Voltage just to get them to run at spec, which is a good thing.

 

Some of the stories I've read about nVidias M/Boards had to do soley with the inexperiance of the Person doing the O/Cing. They where maxing out the Voltages and in some cases I'm surprized they didn't burn up the CPU as well.

They went ouside of the safe zone built into the M/Board and nVidia made it so that People who know what they're doing can go way outside of the safe paramaters set up by nVidia to push hardware to its limits.

I've also read some stories that even staying within the safety of auto over clocking settings there has been issues.

I figure if that's the case then I'd be dealing directly with nVida over that issue but I'm digressing from this post.

 

The #1 issue I'm trying to find out is just what is a safe zone as to Voltage when trying to get the most out of the Dominator line of RAM, I guess I should have named this Thread something different because it's not getting much of a response.

[SCOTT495]

Whats your northbridge volt at?

 

Ive read enough on the forums now to know that you need to slightly overclock the northbridge to be able to handle 4 channels of DDR at higher speeds.

 

Ive got my 4 gigs running at only 900mzh atm because Im still reading up before I atempt to OC much more.

 

I have the P5N32-E-SLI PLUS because my P5N32-E-SLI bios failed due to a known issue when flashing, but theyre almost identical boards as far as I can gather.

 

cheers!

[hollovoid7]

hmm, I wouldent let the Experience rating get under your skin, I have my 8500's running at 800x4-4-4-12 and its been 5.9, my old ddr667 rated 5.9 as well so I guess it just depends on how thier little benchmark likes your setup, and is not an accurate guage of what your system is really capable of.

[Xtreeme]

Its not even a benchmark. Its a "rating system". Not the same. They arent testing your speed, infact Microsoft doesnt even tell you how they get that magic mystery number. Any real testing will show its useless. Use a real benchmark, check mem latency, mem read and write speed, bandwidth etc.