I'm new to overclocking and gone tru guides and I got few questions/problems on my overclock and probably more to come.

What is the purpose of tightening ram's timing? Before raising the FSB, I loosen the timings by increasing the value, usually 5-5-5-12. Why is that so and why must we tighten it back later on.

Let's say i set the FSB:RAM ratio 1:1. I raise the FSB to 400. Is the ram's exact speed 200MHz and doubles it to 400Mhz(dual data rate) or does it has a speed of 400Mhz and runs at 800Mhz due to DDR?

Before raising the FSB must i lower the RAM's frequency to the lowest? Let's say if i didn't lower it and i'm using a PC6400 ram with 800Mhz with 400Mhz exact speed. With an E4400 with a stock FSB of 200Mhz i raise it to 365. Would my ram speed raise 165 to 565(1130)?

I have gone tru many guides but seldom there is any mention of overclocking the nb or the sb. Does raising the FSB affects the nb or sb?

A C2D E4400 has a multiplier of 10x while a C2D E6320 has a multiplier of 7x. Does that mean E4400 would have a higher OC?

Can someone explain to me why a 457(FSB) x 7(multiplier) = 3.2GHz performs better than a 320(FSB) x 10(multi) = 3.2Ghz?

Thank you.

YES.

Because Bus speed is also important in getting faster system.

Core2Duo e6320 Specifications:
Stock Clock Speed: 1.86GHz [266X7]
Stock FSB: 266MHz
Stock Bus Speed: 1066MHz [266X4]
Multiplier: 6-7
L2 Cache: 4MB

When you run at 457X7, you'll get a clock speed of 3.2GHz and a Bus speed of 1828MHz.
While if you run at 320X10, you will also get a clock speed of 3.2GHz, but the bus speed is lowered down to 1280Mhz.

By using your own logical thinking, which one is better on your own view?
Yes, the 457X7 offcourse.

This post has been edited by sHawTY: Aug 6 2007, 01:35 AM

E4400 would have a higher oc or not depends on the fsb wall

btw,performs better in which way?

IMO the reason why 457(FSB) x 7(Multi) performs better than 320(FSB) x 10(Multi) is because that the FSB x 2 = ram speed (under 1:1 memory divider) so 457 x 2 = 914mhz ram speed and 320 x 2 = 640mhz of ram speed only.

There is such case that you can apply a higher memory divider to get a high ram speed as well. eg: 320(FSB) x 10(Multi) using 2:3 memory divider then your ram speed would be 960mhz. If such a case then 320 x 10 (using 2:3 memory divider) will be faster than 457 x 7 (using 1:1 memory divider).

1 thing to bear in mind is that is your ram able to hit that kind of memory speed and the ram timing will make a slight performance different as well eg: DDR 914 using 4-4-4-11 vs DDR 960 using 5-5-5-15.

In Intel Core 2 overclocking you might wanna take note of the strap changes when hitting higher FSB, this is quite subjective as it depends mostly on the mobo itself. some mobo strap change happens under higher FSB than the other one. When strap changes there is slight affect in performance as well.

Sorry i m bad at explaination.... Hope I didnt confuse you more and more

This post has been edited by sup3rfly: Aug 6 2007, 03:53 AM

Okay thanks guys understand about the FSB multiplier issue.

Must i lower the rams frequency to the lowest before i attempt to raise the FSB?

well ram freq is directly affected by the FSB....and the lowest divider you can use is 1:1, you should leave it as 1:1

Lets say we set the FSB as 350

1:1 ram speed = DDR700

2:3 ram speed = DDR1050

4:5 ram speed = DDR875

Yeah... It is recommended to loosen up your ram timing first before raising your fsb or OC. This is because you dont want your OC to be restricted by your ram or something like that.

So loosen up your ram and then start OC till you satisfy then only try to tighten up your ram timing. But bear in mind ram timing in Intel OC isnt that important compare to AMD rig as its wont affect much in performance.

Can i control the frequency of the rams? Just an example. Default FSB 266 MHz, default ram speed 533Mhz. Let's say the ram can overclock to 1000MHz. At 1:1 ratio the ram would reach 1000Mhz with 500MHz FSB. Can i lower the default frequency of the rams so that when i increase the FSB to 500Mhz i would have a lower ram speed at below 1000Mhz so that i can further increase the FSB to above 500Mhz?

AFAIK the lowest divider we have on C2D era is only 1:1, you can only up your ram speed but cant lower it down, if i m not mistaken you can lower it down if you are using 1333 fsb processor (E6x50) series, if you are using 1066 fsb processor (E6x00) then I dont think you can actually lower it. I dont have much info on that as i m still using 1066 proc + p965 chip mobo

This post has been edited by sup3rfly: Aug 6 2007, 03:04 PM

You can get those nvidia chipset mobo where there is an option that you can 'unlink' your fsb and ram frequency.

actually it's not bcoz of c2d, its bcoz of the chipset.. 975 board got options for u to run ur ram lower than 1:1 .. but u cant do that with 965 and latest intel chipset p35

yes, it's a great option actually but then from what i heard this option gonna leave u with other problem..

Hmm okay usiang Intel chipset, but should be okay with the 1:1 ratio for mild OC.

With a mild OC, i change the timing of the rams it makes no difference.

Can someone explain to me why must we tighten the timings? What is the disadvantage of loose timing? And if we overtighten it to a very very small value, what happens?

Thanks.

If too tight, the rams will explode......

Hehe, just joking....

Anyway, the tighter the timings, the faster the rams will run. The disadvantage of this is that you can't overclock the rams that high as compared to loose timings.

However, in terms of real world applications, the timings do not really make a significant impact. This means that you can't really tell the difference unless you measure the speed using a benchmarking program.

i believe by reading the oc guide, and search at google will gives u more understanding in oc.. bout fsb, clockspeed, ram timing, ratio, voltage, etc..

There is oc guide issue on xbitlabs.com, tighter timings means better troughput/cycle.

Rams have 2 characteristics, one is the DRAM freq, and another is the timing..

an ideal ram will be able to have the highest freq, as well as the tightest timing.. no ram can do that..

so you can only improve either one...

since timing doesn't affect much of the processing speed, its best if you loosen the timing 1st then increase the fsb.. the reason we do this is so that the our oc'ing won't be affected by rams can't cope with high freq and tight timing..

once u got to the max stable fsb you can reach, then you can try tighten timing..

read stuffs about bandwidth and latency
then you know how to relate ram speed and timing

to be on the safe side for oc ram, refer to your ram recommended guide cpu-z

with slower speed, cars can safely follow much closer to each other, but when the cars travel faster, the gap or distance between cars will gradually needed to be increase to avoid crashing... so the same principle apply to ram, unless some ram can run at very high speed with tight timing, ie mercedes s-class with auto distance n braking assist, they can travel upto 120kmph following tightly behind ur a55 safely...

tight timing, low frequency (4-4-4-12, 800mhz) vs loose timing, high frequency (5-5-5-15, 1000mhz)

so if given 1 hour time, the number of cars can actually reach a destination is almost same... let say these cars are data. given the same amount of time, the amount of data reach the processor is almost the same...

do i make sense??? well, it's just what i think... because i tried running the mentioned timing n speed but no significant performance gain... btw, i run 4-4-4-8, 4-4-4-10, 4-4-4-12 n 4-4-4-15. to be honest oso no different, maybe intel is really not that sensitive to ram timing... or i'm not that well understanding the setting thingy...

hehe, just sharing...

this is one good explanation right there, certainly helps a lot of the newbies in oc'ing including myself