I'm not an expert on memory timings and such so forgive me if this is a basic question...I recently bought a set of G.Skill DDR 3 1600 memory with advertised timings of 7-8-7-24-2N...the reason I went with that memory is because of its low latency timings when I put the memory in my system (at stock settings) it booted up with timings of 9-9-9-24...is this normal and do I have to go in and manually change the timings to get the rated specs?...or do I have to change my memory frequency to 1600 or maybe change the command rate to 2T? in the CPU-Z SPD tab there is a list of different memory timings (JDEC #2, #3 #4 etc) with timings much closer to G.Skill's specs...what do these mean?...are these timings that my computer can handle safely?...here is a screenshot again sorry for the newbishness but I really want to be able to get closer to the 7-8-7-24 specs http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231335
What CPU-Z is telling you is the different timings you will achieve by different speeds. Look down the last column and you see 7-8-7-24, which is what you are after. Now this is saved in an XMP profile onboard your memory, which should be able to be used by your BIOS. What you need to do is just jump into your BIOS and somehow activate that profile. What mothebaord have you got and someone might be able to advise you how to do this Also what that table shows is those timings will give you 1600 speed, as the clock cycles of the processor is 2:1 to the memory, so the 800 listed becomes 1600 Hope that helps.
thanks, makes sense...I have the ASUS PCX58D Premium motherboard...can anyone tell me how to activate the 7-8-7-24 profile?...does this involve overclocking, or can I activate those profiles at stock speeds?
It will run at stock speed but it's done from the overclocking menu. The only Asus board I have for reference is my old P6T V2 sitting next to me and one that it's done by going to the A.I Tweaker tab, and then changing the AI Tuner mode to XMP Profile. Below that a new option will appear to choose which profile, but there's likely to only be one stored in your RAM so I wouldn't worry too much about that. If however your mobo is a bit older (I spy a 5 in the name), and you cant set an XMP profile just bash 'em in manually: CAS# Latency: 7 DRAM Clocks DRAM RAS# to CAS# Latency: 8 DRAM Clocks DRAM RAS# Precharge: 7 DRAM Clocks DRAM RAS#Activate to Precharge: 24 DRAM Clocks Command Rate: 2N That's literally all an XMP profile would set for you. Using the profile or doing them manually has the same outcome
thanks for the help...I didn't know that you had to manually select the XMP profile...I thought the system loaded the XMP profile by default...I went into the BIOS and saw that there was 1 XMP profile available with the 7-8-7-24 timings...after choosing that profile the 'Target DRAM Frequency' went from 1333 to 1600...does that mean my memory is now being overlocked? also I always thought it was best to have a Command Rate of 1T...will having it at 2T lower performance in any way?
