Help me find an article please.

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I don't know, isn't that where most of the greatest minds and ideas of our time has come from? Drunken sporadicness? :p

This is going off topic lol, but what beer do you like best?

I think Moosehead and labatt are by far the best out there.
 
You could be correct. And even though alcohol is technically a depressant, I have never gotten depressed because of it. I have gotten sleeply though.

Never tried either of those beers, but I will. Currently I'm partial to Molson. I didn't think I'd like it but a buddy had it so I tried it. Who would have guessed. I don't drink a lot of beer though, I prefer Jack. But I drink it a little too fast, get piss drunk, and start annoying folks cause I want to fight. Ahh whiskey!

Anyways, back on topic. I noticed that that article was written back on 10/21/04. So what does it really tell us now? Has Corsair now gone to BrainPower PCBs? I assume OCZ and PQI still use it? I'm still new to all this so can you help break down what this article is saying?
 
Well good for you! Here in America I find it to be more of a suggestion than an imposition. But I do live in the south where people take things a little easier. heheh. :D
 
Yeah it's great how you can die for your country at 18 but gotta be 21 to drink ;)

Anyways, back on topic. I noticed that that article was written back on 10/21/04. So what does it really tell us now? Has Corsair now gone to BrainPower PCBs? I assume OCZ and PQI still use it? I'm still new to all this so can you help break down what this article is saying?
Yeah, basically everything it said is still true though. Last time I looked at corsair they weren't using Brainpower PCB and sometimes if newegg has a good close up picture you can tell whether it is or not.

OCZ
G.Skill LAs
PQI Turbos
Patriot XBL

Those are all samsung TCCD's with brainpower PCB and will all do 250MHz+ as far as RAM frequency goes, but as of late those have all been known to go even further.

What exactly do you need me to break down? Basically the article was simply saying that the actual circuit board the RAM IC's (integrated circuits, otherwise known as the 'black chips' on the RAM itself) can make a difference as far as overclocking goes.

All the top OC'ers of today use samsung TCCD IC's which can hit high frequencies with fairly tight timings at low voltages with a combination of brainpowerPCB which oddly enough looks like it has the least about of traces out of all the ram, meaning the gold lines that connect all the circuits.

That combination of the TCCD chips on that particular circuit board seem to give the best OC'ing results is mainly what that article is pointing out, that and how to easily identify whether or not your RAM stick is infact on brainpower PCBs
 
Yeah, 18 is the perfect age to die. As long as for your country and not from alcohol poisoning or some other alcohol induced stupidity. I mean the whole reason they lowered the age to vote from 21 to 18 was because the politcal officials sending all the 18, 19, and 20 year olds off to war weren't even voted in by 18, 19, and 20 year olds. Now if they'ed just get off their asses and lower the drinkin age. I mean hell, there's nothing a solider likes better than a cold beer after a long tour in the hot desert.

So let me see if I've got this straight. The Samsung TCCD IC's are the "black chips" and the Brainpower PCB is the "board" that all the black chips are mounted on? And put together they make wicked sweet RAM which over clocks really well? You said that those RAMs will do 250+MHz or further. I know that the faster the frequency the shorter the clock period and thus the more clock cycles per second. I also know that the tighter the timings on the RAM the faster the commands are issued (or more accuratley, the shorter the latency between commands is) which allows the RAM to perform more commands in less clock cycles (ie. better performance). Now I know that the looser the timings the faster you can overclock the frequency, but I don't understand why and isn't that just a trade off (more clocks per second but also more clocks to perform commands)?

My questions:
1) Is my understanding of the Samsung TCCD IC and Brainpower PCB correct?
2) Is my understanding of how RAM works correct?

If it is:
3) Why can you oc higher when you loosen timings, and is this really just a trade off that doesn't help much?

Also, I read about a CPU:RAM ratio of 1:1 :
4) What is this comparing? FSB and RAM frequency?

I know all that was long, but I spent all night reading up on RAM so now I'm full of questions. SO, smart guy,:p I await your answers. :D
 
So let me see if I've got this straight. The Samsung TCCD IC's are the "black chips" and the Brainpower PCB is the "board" that all the black chips are mounted on? And put together they make wicked sweet RAM which over clocks really well?
Yes yes and more yes.

1. Yes
2. yes

but I don't understand why and isn't that just a trade off (more clocks per second but also more clocks to perform commands)?
Yeah it is a trade off, but there's not a huge differen in bandwidth between 2-2-2-5 timings and 3-3-3-8 timings really, but there will be a huge bandwidth increase behind 200MHz at 2-2-2-5 timings and 220 at 3-3-3-8 because with a higher frequency more information can go through.

Technically there is a trade off, you have to find the highest frequency with the tightest timings, if your timings are too loose, then you lose that extra bandwidth gained from the extra frequency, but mind you you'd have to have REALLY loose timings to lose it all especially once you got beyond 250MHz, it'd have to be like 5-5-5-8 or worse before you'd notice that it's actually running the same or slower than 200 at 2-2-2-5

3. Well I don't see how you would come to the conclusion that it doesn't help much. If that were the case why would people do it :D

Heres my sandra memory benches from when I was OC'ing my RAM:

DDR400 - 200MHz - 2-2-2-5-1T 2.6v @ Approx 3000/2800

Those end numbers are the numbers Sandra shows, the 3000 being the top number in the graph and 2800 being the bottom number, effectively meaning read and write.

Now here's some OC'd benches since the ones above are stock:

DDR470 - 235MHz - 2-3-3-6-1T 2.7v @ 3616/3368 - CPC-ON

So as you can see, even though my ras to cas and ras precharge (middle numbers) are looser at 3, there is a 600mb/sec increase in speed for the read and a 500mb/sec increase for the write.

Like I said those timings don't make THAT huge of a difference, you'd probably only notice it if you went from 200MHz at 2-2-2-5 ti 205MHz at 2.5-3-3-7 that you'd notice no difference.

Here's a bench of speeds that wasn't stable on my system, but it was because of my motherboard, not the RAM itself:

DDR500 - 250MHz - 3-3-3-8-1T 2.9v @ 3779/3495

So see, 3-3-3-8 is valueRAM timings, but the first 3 (cas latency) and the 8 (cycle time) DO NOT effect bandwidth, they effect stability, so even if it was 2-3-3-5 that score would be basically the same. As you can see there it's a 750+mb/sec for the read and almost 700mb/sec for the write ;)

That basically tells you right there why it's worth it, and on an AMD64 system, stock PC3200 would get almost 6gb/sec so OC'ing the RAM on those can give you real benefits, and newer Intels since they have better memory controller than socket A AMDs

Also, I read about a CPU:RAM ratio of 1:1 :
4) What is this comparing? FSB and RAM frequency?
Yes it is. You always want 1:1

Hope that answers it all............GET TO READING! :D
 
Thanks for the PM man. It seems that everybody started posting all at once.

Now that I know exactly what TCCD IC's and PCB's are I now know what your article is saying. It's pretty interesting.

I'm glad to know that I'm starting to get a handle on how RAM works.

Yeah it is a trade off, but there's not a huge differen in bandwidth between 2-2-2-5 timings and 3-3-3-8 timings really, but there will be a huge bandwidth increase behind 200MHz at 2-2-2-5 timings and 220 at 3-3-3-8 because with a higher frequency more information can go through.

Technically there is a trade off, you have to find the highest frequency with the tightest timings, if your timings are too loose, then you lose that extra bandwidth gained from the extra frequency, but mind you you'd have to have REALLY loose timings to lose it all especially once you got beyond 250MHz, it'd have to be like 5-5-5-8 or worse before you'd notice that it's actually running the same or slower than 200 at 2-2-2-5

Yeah after I posted I started thinking more about oc'ing RAM. I pretty much came to the same conlusion about it that you posted.

I found this article about it too: http://www.corsairmicro.com/corsair/products/guides/AN501_Latency_Settings_and_Performance.pdf

If you look at page 8 is has a table showing the effects that changing all the different timings independently cause. Although, it shows that loosening the cas latency and the ras to cas delay has the greatest effect on perfomance. And that loosening the ras precharge has little effect and loosening active to precharge has even less of an effect. I was just wondering what your take on the article was.

Anyways, I appriciate all the info you've given me. I have a few more questions though. :D You didn't think you were gettin off that easy did you? :laughing:

1) How do you calculate what the transfer rate of bandwith is? Or what ever it was you were talking about here:

That basically tells you right there why it's worth it, and on an AMD64 system, stock PC3200 would get almost 6gb/sec so OC'ing the RAM on those can give you real benefits, and newer Intels since they have better memory controller than socket A AMDs

2) Can you explain more about the CPU/RAM ratio? I realize that if isn't 1/1 you have a bottleneck. But lets say I oc my CPU by upping the FSB do I have to up my RAM frequency or will the BIOS do it for me? What else is there to know about the CPU/RAM ratio?

On my laptop I have a FSB speed of 100MHz and a Bus speed of 400MHz. (according to CPU-Z)

3) What is the difference between these two?

Ok so it seems I've made some progress. :) But as I'm sure you are aware, the more I know the more I realize that I don't know. You know? lol!

I eagerly await your response. :D
 
Well, in regards to that article, I just jumped to page 8 real quick, but honestly, I think that's BS. The ras to cas and ras precharge have the most effect on bandwidth which can easily be seen by running a Sandra memory benchmarking test. Cas latency and the cycle time have the least effect on bandwidth and performance, but rather help for stability when reaching higher clocks.

This thread here:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3393

EDIT: Oh yeah, the DRAM timings are near the bottom, you'll see big black text that says DRAM TIMINGS, but like I said it's about 3/4 of the way down the page ;)

Backs that up as well....and personally I think people from DFI know a helluva lot more than whoever that was who wrote that from corsair....soo I guess you gotta do your own tests to find out 100%, but I still stick with what I've seen which is ras to cas and ras precharge offer the most in bandwidth, and cas latency does nothing.


1) How do you calculate what the transfer rate of bandwith is? Or what ever it was you were talking about here:
Sandra memory bench

2) Can you explain more about the CPU/RAM ratio? I realize that if isn't 1/1 you have a bottleneck. But lets say I oc my CPU by upping the FSB do I have to up my RAM frequency or will the BIOS do it for me? What else is there to know about the CPU/RAM ratio?
Well like in my BIOS I can set the RAM ratio manually, so if I set it to 6/6 (which obviously is 1:1, but it gives you fractions from like 3/3 all the way up to 6/6 so you can have all the ones in between if you needed some weird number)

Anywho, I set the DRAM ratio to 6/6 and it'll follow whatever my CPU FSB is.

Nothing else to really know about the ratio besides all 1:1 means is that the CPU and RAM can efficiently communicate at the same time.

On my laptop I have a FSB speed of 100MHz and a Bus speed of 400MHz. (according to CPU-Z)
I'm going to assume it's an intel laptop and that's why you are seeing that.

The bus speed is the overall communication between the whole board....if the FSB is 100, then you'd need PC100 RAM, or really underclocked PC2100 lol, but I doubt that's the case.
 
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