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Was I Cheated,


octagon

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I have a dual-core i3-540, but dual-channel Corsaire RAM. Should I expect the RAM to be running at the frequency I thought it would? I thought I bought the 1600 MHz strips, but seeing what I have on my computer after setting it all up, I really don't know what kind of RAM they sold me. See the snapshots, and please help me to understand.

post-45518-0-86889100-1301060663_thumb.j

post-45518-0-19165000-1301060679_thumb.j

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I wouldn't know what settings to do or how to go about doing that. I guess it would be done in the BIOS, I've been scouring the web for instructions, but get a headache over all the technical talk.

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<br /><font face="verdana, geneva, lucida,">DDR stands for Double Data Rate. SO any DDR3 (and DDR2) rating is double the actual speed. So ram running 650MHz is running DDR3 1300.</font><br /><font face="verdana, geneva, lucida,"><br /></font><br /><font face="verdana, geneva, lucida,">Seems like you got 1300's</font><br />
<br /><br /><br />

I though it was something like that, but that still leaves me short of what I paid for - 1333 Mhz instead of 1600 Mhz.

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you purchased one of the cheapest 1156 boards and the cheapest CPU to go with because of the on-board graphics and now your questioning the FSB of the ram, yeah just leave the ram alone, don't go fiddling the bios as it should already be performing to your expectations.

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You appear to be running DDR3-1333 RAM, judging by the DRAM frequency shown in the screenshots. If you're unsure what type of memory you have, check the SPD values with CPU-Z.

EDIT: Before you attempt to adjust memory settings in the BIOS, find out your RAM specs first. DDR3-1333 modules have a DRAM frequency of 667Mhz. Anything higher is considered 'overclocking'.

Edited by Supernova
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SuperNova beat me to it. CPU-Z and looking at SPD gives you the manufacturer information from the memory module directly which will tell you if you got what you paid for. The speed shown in your test results may not necessarily reflect that as they are the frequency set in the BIOS. If SPD shows 800 then you have 1600 memory.

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SuperNova beat me to it. CPU-Z and looking at SPD gives you the manufacturer information from the memory module directly which will tell you if you got what you paid for. The speed shown in your test results may not necessarily reflect that as they are the frequency set in the BIOS. If SPD shows 800 then you have 1600 memory.

Aha! Thanks to you and SuperNova.

post-45518-0-87106100-1301066602_thumb.j

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you purchased one of the cheapest 1156 boards and the cheapest CPU to go with because of the on-board graphics and now your questioning the FSB of the ram, yeah just leave the ram alone, don't go fiddling the bios as it should already be performing to your expectations.

You're right, I'm a cheap bastard, but I'm satisfied with the stability and speed of this "budget" machine, and the RAM will definitely not be over heating as it's only running at 20% with 10 programs open.

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Those are some strange frequencies there, namely jedec #1 and jedec #2. Can't say I've seen odd numbers like that. Typical frequencies are 400MHz (800) and 533MHz (1066) respectively.

BTW, you do in fact have 1600 RAM as indicated by XMP-1600. However, your memory frequency seems to be limited by the CPU front side bus. In order to raise the DRAM frequency to spec, you'll have to increase FSB. Some boards allow you to do this, some don't; refer to you motherboard manual.

Edited by Supernova
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Those are some strange frequencies there, namely jedec #1 and jedec #2. Can't say I've seen odd numbers like that. Typical frequencies are 400MHz (800) and 533MHz (1066) respectively.

BTW, you do in fact have 1600 RAM as indicated by XMP-1600. However, your memory frequency seems to be limited by the CPU front side bus. In order to raise the DRAM frequency to spec, you'll have to increase FSB. Some boards allow you to do this, some don't; refer to you motherboard manual.

Thanks again SuperNova. I've downloaded the manual for my MB and am reading it. No mention of overclocking , but it has an Intel TuboMode Tech feature that you can enable. Maybe I'll try enabling that to see what happens... or maybe not. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Your help, again, was much appreciated.

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Um, sorry but...

The i3 doesn't use a front side bus. It has an integrated memory controller.

CPU-z does say that is DDR3-1600, so you didn't get ripped off.

Whoever built your computer however forgot to configure the BIOS correctly for that RAM.

You do need to change the memory frequency manually to 800 (1600) however to get it to run at that speed.

You also must change vDIMM to 1.65 volts if you do that in order for it to be stable. As stated before DDR3-1600 is just DDR3-1333 that is guaranteed to overclock to 1600 (with proper settings).

All that said however, the minor increase in memory bandwidth that you'll get will be completely unnoticeable. Modern systems don't bottleneck memory bandwidth anyway - they are limited by hard disk read times.

In summary, don't worry about it. Pick up the Half Life 2 Orange Box and get a taste for PC gaming - enjoy :)

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