Hey guys, I'm pretty new to this overclocking stuff. My system's a little out-dated so thats why I'm trying it out for the first time but I was just wondering if my RAM would limit my overclocking ability? I have the Corsair Dominators DDR2 PC2-6400, i can't find any technical specs on them anymore cause they are discontinued, but on cpu-z it says my max bandwidth is 400MHz. When overclocking the CPU bus speed is it possible to go higher than the RAM bandwidth? Right now I have it clocked to 400MHz with multiplier X9 to 3.6GHZ, I want to see how high I can go without changing the voltages so if I go over 400MHz will my system crash? On a different note, I was just wondering how to test if speedstep and c1e works, I turned both of them on in the bios but have never experienced my multiplier dropping so I dont think its working. Is there a certain time it has to idle before it changes? If you needs need anymore info on my pc thats not on my sig I can put it up, thanks..
Remember your RAM is DDR (double data rate), so the effective rate is 800 MHz. You should be able to squeeze a bit more out of it, especially if you have 2 x 2GB DIMMs rather than 4 x 1 GB. It might be useful to loosen the timings a bit, as this can allow your RAM to run at higher speed for the same voltage. You should be able to get 5-10% out of it without even doing that TBH, though. Just up the FSB a bit (say to 402) and stress test using P95 blend (or other memory intensive thing, suggestions here other Gurus). Keep going until it's not stable then back off a bit. Just keep an eye on the core temps.
I had my old 4GB set of Corsairs running at 833MHz with 4-4-4-12 timings. I have 8GB now and that is running at 833MHz with 5-5-5-18. Both running at 2.1 volts. Could probably have got more out them, especially with loosened timings. I didn't reach the limit of the memory to find out.
Thanks guys I've just tested it out and it seems to be stable running prime95. And I found out the solution for the speedstep, I just had my power option set to high performance and changed it to balanced. It do a little research on changing my RAM timings and we'll see how things go.
