Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

[Jofaba]

Like the title says, I'm trying to find out which y'all think is more important when it comes to ram. I have OCZ Platinum 1gig sticks with 2-3-2-5 timings at the moment, and have my processor overclocked to 2.4ghz. When I put the proc/ram ratio (or maybe it's ram/proc) to 333mhz, my ram goes back to 400mhz (shows as 200mhz in CPUZ). If I overclock my processor any higher, then my ram gets overclocked too because I only have 4 ratio options in my BIOS.

The next option is 266mhz* but that brings my RAM frequency down into like the 340mhz* range. If I overclock to 2.5ghz, my ram is around 417mhz. With my current timings, I find that this overclock kicks me back to desktop more often. If I loosen up the CAS timing to 2.5, then it seems to settle down*.

I'm still an overclocking amateur, and most of what I've learned is from trial and error. I've come to the conclusion that BF2 doesn't really seem to benefit from an overclock, whether it's the processor or the videocard, but I'm still trying a few things out.

Also: If I go any higher than 2.5, I run into problems with my BIOS. The first issue that I notice is that "restart" no longer works. When I save my BIOS settings and the computer restarts, it actually keeps running. My LED fans stay lit and it's at a low idle, and my monitor shows no activity (orange "off" light instead of green), and I have to manually turn the computer off and then back on.

Giving more voltage to the processor doesn't seem to help, and taking voltage away causes a POST crash, and I can't even get back into the BIOS (says "wait..." forever).

My ram is rated to handle 2.8v* without voiding the warrenty, and I force a 66/33mhz speed on my agp/pci. I believe the highest voltage I've fed my processor so far is 1.5v*.

I can't help but still look for the elusive setup that will let me run all high at 1600x1200 again. I've had the setup once, and it's frustrating that my roomate down the hall has a similar setup and we once matched specs, and now he plays high and I play with more medium than high. Even though I know overclocking is a touchy subject for BF2, I'm still interested for other games like F.E.A.R., COD2, etc., although I'd LOVE for it to work for BF2 as well.

Thanks for any support/ideas/suggestions. =)

PS. As soon as I get a second job or a fulltime, I'm building a new computer with nVidia, SLI, and a duel core processor.
----------------
*Sorry, it's 3am and I'm getting ready for work. I would have checked to make sure, but unfortunately I'm going by memory on the numbers that I noted here. I'm like 98% sure that I'm correct, but I'll edit anything that was wrong when I get back (which will probaby be while y'all still sleeping anyway heh).

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

Ram speed is more important than the timings.

[Talus]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

I'm still an overclocking amateur, and most of what I've learned is from trial and error. I've come to the conclusion that BF2 doesn't really seem to benefit from an overclock, whether it's the processor or the videocard, but I'm still trying a few things out.

I get about a 6 fps boost when I overclock my vidcard with BF2.

[Jofaba]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

Overdrive (section of Catalyst for PE boards) caps my memory at 615 (which I'm assuming is 1230 effective) but my core goes up to 594. I start getting artifacts at anything higher than 574 though. So I'm curious to see if watercooling lets me reach a higher core speed, and if I'll notice a difference.

But overclocking my videocard is SO much easier than the processor. I'm going to try overclocking my ram a little, which is supposably covered by their warrenty:

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_el_ddr_pc_3200_platinum

which says you can increase the voltage to 2.8v, however it doesn't give a max speed. That leads me to believe that the highest stable setting at 2.8v is the highest you could get anyway, which is probably more than my motherboard will allow. (2.8 is available but doubt it'd be stable). My main concern with overclocking the processor over 2.5ghz is that restart problem. I figured it was too much voltage not letting it get to the reset idle but lowering it caused that POST error and I had to reflash.

Don't worry though, I'm not doing any of this tonight. I'm waiting till I get watercooling before I overclock any more. I plan to do lots more research, and talk in these forums about different stuff.

Speaking of which, do any of you recommend good ram and bios books/sites? I have this

http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=9

but theres still stuff in my BIOS that I don't know. I realize Google will point me in some directions but I'd feel better knowing that I'm studying stuff someone suggested instead of picking one at random.

As always, thanks for the suggestions =)

[imported_Wasp]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

When you overclock an AMD 64 system you will quickly run into problems
unless you reduce the Hypertransport or HT speed. For anything above 220
FSB you should use 4x speed. If you go above 260 then try 3x.

I'm running my Venice 3000+ at 2.59Ghz with 285 FSB and the ram at 166
which gives me 470Mhz effectively. I have increased the CPU voltage to max
which is 1.57V. My MSI K8N Platinum SLI sucks in that department
unfortunately. Ram is at 2.8v. Mem timings are 6-3-3 CL2. My 7800GT is
running at 470/1150Mhz. My memory chips are Patriot XBL 2x512 400-533Mhz.

1GB memory sticks that I have tested needs increased timings faster than 512
MB. You should be able to use the 166 setting on your memory if not then try
upgrading the BIOS. You could try increasing memory timing to 6-3-3 CL 2.5
or 7-3-3 CL 2.5. Also when you oc high on FSB you should consider
increasing the north bridge voltage a bit. say from 1.5v to 1.6v.

There are a lot of other timings also and if your motherboard has these you
should start with setting 1T/2T command to 1T. Here is a link to a guide for
the rest of them: http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com

20-30FPS does sound a bit low and I'm wondering about your sound settings
too. Onboard cards should run at medium and you should try both software and
hardware to check the effect on FPS. Stay away from the overdrive tool. Use
either ATI tray tools or ATI tool to overclock your 3D card manually.

I had an ATI X800XT myself and it did struggle abit especially on cleansweep. I
recommend running terrain on high, textures on high, the rest on medium except view
distance 100% and texture filtering on high. If you are not happy with performance
after the first shader optimation empty the cache folder and try again.
My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache.

I used the NGO optimized ATI driver with my card. You can find them at
www.guru3d.com.

[IntensivCareBear]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

could somebody please tell me how to check/ change ram speed?

i bought some pc2700 ram, because i thought my originaly ram was pc2700 (its either that or pc3200), but it says "RAM frequency 400 mhz" in the start up thing (you know, same screen that it says "1024 ram ok".

i have a suspicion that my pc2700 ram didnt set the other ram down to 333 as it should have, and that im running them all at 400 mhz, causing problems.

the biggest evidence is that my extra 512 mb of DDR seemed to have little increase in performance, and i now get black flashes and textures disappearing with huge lag online!

im convinced this is my ram trying to run too fast, but ive checked the BIOS and dont know where to find RAM speed or how to change it if its too high!

please help me out here!

[rombaft]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

Go into BIOS , and look for it, you must find it somewhere .
Look for FSB , this is probably 200Mhz (actualy it will be 2000Mhz) meaning your ram runs at 400Mhz

[IntensivCareBear]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

yeah my FSB is 200 mhz, but i had to run CPUZ to find it, i couldnt find it anywhere in the BIOS.

how come my pc2700 ram runs at 200mhz and is considered PC3200 by the comp? thatd be nice if it worked right, but i think it would work better if all of it was at its proper 333 mhz speed.

[Jofaba]

Re: Which is more important: Ram Speed or Timings? Also: some OC Q's

You should have a section in your bios for your memory, and you'll have to choose "manual" (if that's your BIOS's design) or similar option. Automatic doesn't give the option of changing the ratio.

On the hypertransport, yeah I've changed my multiplier and that increased the hypertransport and decreased the cpu overclocks respectively. I never tried it the other way around. I'll look into that, thanks. Currently, my hypertransport and cpu are equal in overclock terms, unless I completely misunderstand what I'm looking at.