Quick RAM timings question (tighter timings or higher FSB?)

[Petra]

Hey guys, I have a quick question about RAM timings for you...

Okay, I finally got my rig (in sig) back up and running again and I'm attempting to push it a little farther than I did before my last mobo died. Anyway, I know the rig is memtest and Prime95 stable when running in the following configuration:
CPU: 2.2GHz (11.0 x 200MHz @ ~1.8v)
RAM: DDR400 speed (200MHz @ 11-3-3-2.5 2.8v)

Here's the config that I'm testing right now:
CPU: 2376MHz (11.0 x 216MHz @ ~1.95v)
RAM: DDR433 speed (216MHz @ 11-4-4-3.0 2.9v)

What I really want to know is wether the bump to 216MHz FSB is really worth the shittier RAM timings...and I don't need anyone telling me that I need better/faster RAM because I already know that.

Thanks for the help

 

[Petra]

*bump*

Awww, come on... Don't make me stop the dual Prime I've had going for the past 8 hours just to fucking bench the thing and figure out the difference myself

 

[Spewn]

I'll bet you a coke the difference is negligable. I picked up 200 3dmarks going up 2mhz fsb, and changing my timings from 8-4-4-3 to 11-3-3-2.5.

 

[pduan87]

How bout both? Tighten timings to 2-2-2-5 and then see how high you can go.

 

[Spewn]

Originally posted by pduan87
How bout both? Tighten timings to 2-2-2-5 and then see how high you can go.

My ram sucks, and I'd probably have to run it at 2.9v@166fsb to get 2-2-2-5 out of it, maybe even less, lol, at which point I'd have lost nearly 400mhz cpu speed, and 36mhz fsb. I doubt the tighter timings would be worth *that* much.

 

[Petra]

Damn it, I can't take it anymore! lol

Spewn, you're on!

*goes and fires up 3DMark2001SE to test each config*

 

[Petra]

HAH! I think someone owes me a Coke!

Results:

11-4-4-3.0 @ 216FSB: 17655
11-3-3-2.5 @ 200FSB: 17125


...and here's the one that left me totally floored:
11-3-3-3.0 @ 216FSB: 20203
I don't know how the fuck that happened just by lowering those two timings by one clock

Oh well, who cares, I broke 20000... lol

 

[dobbz]

do that one again and tell us if its still 20k+. then do it again and tell us again.

 

[MetalX]

Originally posted by Petra
HAH! I think someone owes me a Coke!

Results:

11-4-4-3.0 @ 216FSB: 17655
11-3-3-2.5 @ 200FSB: 17125


...and here's the one that left me totally floored:
11-3-3-3.0 @ 216FSB: 20203
I don't know how the fuck that happened just by lowering those two timings by one clock

Oh well, who cares, I broke 20000... lol

Gonna need some screenies with claims like these. jk

 

[Petra]

Originally posted by dobbz
do that one again and tell us if its still 20k+. then do it again and tell us again.

I'll run it again after it finishes running Prime... I'm 14 hours in this time and I'd rather not stop it early again. I highly doubt that it'll hit above 20k again because I think that it was some kind of freak glitch or something... If you click the ORB compare link that is in that post, you'll see that the main reason the score is so high is because somehow I got 557.8FPS in Dragothic (low detail). However, comparing the 20k+ score with the score I got while at 11-4-4-3.0, most of the framerates are about 10-20FPS higher when running at 11-3-3-3.0 (not counting the freak FPS in Dragothic low detail) so I think that there should still be a noticeable difference between the two.

I think my system may have stalled or something during that run of Dragothic and 3DMark just kept counting frames or something like that... who knows

 

[Petra]

Okay, as expected, I was not able to reproduce the glitch/hang/whatever which caused me to get that score of 20203. I'm not totally sure of what happened in the first place and I'll probably never really know... Anyway, when I retested, 11-3-3-3.0 @ 216FSB produced a score of 17915 which is still an improvement over the score I got at 11-4-4-3.0 @ 216FSB.

Still, glitch or not, having that score of 20203 on the ORB with an Athlon XP 2100+ is pretty sweet