bigal1542

Hey guys,

I am starting to get a hold of the general stuff of building a computer and the basics of how it all works. Can someone explain to me what I don't understand about the memory that I have in my laptop? Here is a sceenshot of what CPU-Z shows. So what frequency is my memory running at, and what timings? I can't find anywhere in the BIOS to tell me or to allow the setting to check what it is. I am a noob if you can't tell.

Thanks!

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TwoCables

The timings table is a list of the stock settings you can use that are guaranteed stable or something. That's just FYI.

To see your current memory clock and timings, click on the Memory tab next to the SPD tab. Then multiply the DRAM Frequency by 2 because you have "Double Data Rate" memory, or "DDR" (but DDR2).

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bigal1542

I see that that number matches the Rated FSB, are they the same thing?

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TwoCables

Nope. But it does mean that your "memory ratio" is at 1:1, which used to be more important (it still is, but not so much). It's still important that some people strive for a 1:1 ratio if possible.

But with me, I leave my "Memory Clock Mode" in bios set to Unlinked so that I can adjust the FSB without the memory being affected. Otherwise, I'd have to choose a ratio. And I prefer more control than that.

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superon

They can be the same thing if you don't change the memory dividers. So if your FSB is at 200Mhz and your dividers are set to 1:1 ratio with the FSB, then your DDR2 will be at an effective frequency of 800Mhz because its double data rate and transfers 4 bits per cycle as opposed to 2 bits with plain old DDR and 8 bits with DDR3.

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bigal1542

So does every BIOS allow for setting Memory Clock Mode to unlinked? How do I change the FSB, and even worse, what is it? I have read a little about it but it still doesn't make a lot of sense.

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Hailscott

Just because you leave your memory unlinked dosen't mean your not using a ratio, it's just automatic.

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superon

The FSB is the bus or connection between the CPU and the chipset (northbridge) and the chipset connects to all the other components memory, southbridge, PCI-E bus... Overclocking the FSB generally improves overall system performance since this is essentially the "highway" that connects everything to the processor. Also overclocking the FSB will result in an overclocked CPU and overclocked memory as the CPU frequency is a product of the FSB clock and the CPU's multiplier -- same goes with the memory more or less. AS you are on a laptop -- your BIOS is probably pretty limited as to what you can tweak and change as far as FSB speed and CPU multi, and memory dividers go.

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ericeod

To answer your question about unlinked, the answer is no. Only the NVIDIA chipsets allow for unlinking of your ram. All it really is is that the bios allows you to set what ram speed you want, then it sets a ram divider to get as close to what you set. So the NVIDIA bios have many more dividers then Intel, but there is a drawback (and the reason why Intel limits the dividers). There are some dividers that are just not stable or even bootable. Intel only allows for know stable dividers, and nothing lower then 1:1.

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eVGA 680i Overclocking guide .......... ASUS P5E/Maximus Thread.......... 4.4GHz CPU-Z

TwoCables

I did not know that. That explains everything, and what you said here made this extremely easy to understand. This may not be my thread, but I thank you for posting this.

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