OC/RAm? what?!

[Calzinger]

What if your multiplier is already at max? My CPU multiplier is already at 10x.

 

[gaara]

Then you have to use memory dividers, which do exactly what they sound like. For example, you can go into the BIOS and change the FSB/RAM ratio to 3:4 from 1:1 (there's tons of options though), then your FSB would run at 200 but your RAM would run at 150.

Then you're free to raise the FSB up with the RAM following up on the 3:4 ratio. It's basically underclocking your RAM and then slowly raising it back up to stock speeds while at the same time increasing the FSB speeds past stock

 

[idiotec]

What if your multiplier is already at max? My CPU multiplier is already at 10x.

That doesn't matter, in fact in most situations, you'll be lowering the multi in this kind of config. In my example the multi is lowered from stock of x17 to x14.

Looking at your sig, you have DDR550 RAM, so this kind of situation definately comes into play for you. You could do stock multi, 275HTT with 1:1 on your RAM and have your CPU OC'd to 2.75Ghz without even OC'ing your RAM. Of course, the CPU might not take that

 

[Calzinger]

Is the ratio usually 1:1 on default? My FSB is at 200 with a 10x CPU multiplier, but when I do a CPU-Z, my RAM frequency shows up as 170mhz.

@idiotec
So you basically want to raise your FSB as high as possible as much as your RAM can take under 1:1. The CPU can be handled with its own multiplier. If your CPU begins to crap out, then you just lower the CPU multiplier. Correct?

 

[idiotec]

Is the ratio usually 1:1 on default? My FSB is at 200 with a 10x CPU multiplier, but when I do a CPU-Z, my RAM frequency shows up as 170mhz.

You have some bad settings in your BIOS. At stock it should put the ratio so your RAM runs at full speed. Right now it is seriously underclocked. You should have FSB of 200 and RAM frequency of 275.

 

[idiotec]

@idiotec
So you basically want to raise your FSB as high as possible as much as your RAM can take under 1:1. The CPU can be handled with its own multiplier. If your CPU begins to crap out, then you just lower the CPU multiplier. Correct?

Basically yeah. Although I think most people find out the max CPU speed first, then find max FSB speed, then do the combination that gets as close to the max of both.

Let's say you find the max your RAM will run at is 300Mhz (DDR600). Now at the stock multi, that would be 3Ghz on the CPU. Let's say the CPU won't take that speed, but the CPU will run stable at 2.7Ghz. You can lowe the multi to x9.

That would give you:
2.7Ghz CPU
DDR600 RAM at 1:1

That would kick ass right

Of course all these numbers are just examples and may be nowhere close to what your OC will actually look like.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

You can Overclock pretty high with value ram, if you loosen up the timings a notch

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/6946/valueram5ll.jpg

 

[Hacp]

Also, something to note. You should not use the ram divider to increase clock speeds if you don't have an athlon 64 system as you will see a very low increase of performance with higher clock speeds but non synchro ram. The Athlon 64 is the exeption because it already runs the cpu "fsb" at a non synchronious ratio to the memory FSB, so using the dividers will not hurt performance at all.

 

[gaara]

You have some bad settings in your BIOS. At stock it should put the ratio so your RAM runs at full speed. Right now it is seriously underclocked. You should have FSB of 200 and RAM frequency of 275.

They should both be running at 200 actually, RAM speed should never (and can never) be run higher than the FSB. He can, however, lower the CPU multi and pump up the FSB speed to 275MHz with the RAM on a 1:1 ratio..

Hacp is also right when you factor in the HTT bus on Athlon 64s

 

[Calzinger]

Any idea why my memory clock is so low? My bios reports that the memory frequency is 167mhz. CPU-Z reports the same. Everything is on the default settings. I even reset the CMOS.