will 4 sticks kill my oc potential?

D

DeathMan

Gawd
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
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543
looking at upgrading to 2 gigs of ram (4X512mb).

from what i've heard (don't ask where, cuz i don't remember :p) populating all the slots of a mobo w/ ram will make it harder to oc...

is this in any way correct?

running the rig in my sig,
thanks in advance
 
Having 4 sticks of memory will hurt your O/C poentential. You will have to run at looser timmings and lower speeds.
 
we should be explicit though. it'll probably hurt your ram overclock.. but we can't say for sure until you try it. i went from 2x1gb to 4x1gb once and was able to keep the 276mhz at 3-3-3, just had to change command rate to 2T and do some other tweaking ;)

memory doesn't effect the cpu
 
From my experience 4 sticks of 512MB performed extremely well. I overclocked my OCZ Platinum to 2225 at 275MHz easily. But the problem was it wouldn't maintain stability. One day it would be fine but the next it won't even load into windows. I said forget it somethings up with the memory controller. 2x1Gb all the way!
 
decade146 said:
From my experience 4 sticks of 512MB performed extremely well. <snip> But the problem was it wouldn't maintain stability.
Click to expand...
uh.. :confused: :p

so it overclocks well, but not stable? then it doesn't overclock well! :p :D
 
decade146 said:
From my experience 4 sticks of 512MB performed extremely well. I overclocked my OCZ Platinum to 2225 at 275MHz easily. But the problem was it wouldn't maintain stability. One day it would be fine but the next it won't even load into windows. I said forget it somethings up with the memory controller. 2x1Gb all the way!
Click to expand...
It may take some loosening of MAL and RP. My Opty's MC does exactly as you described with just running 2x512 and 7/4.5 of these options at above ~283 HTT. First it would Prime for hours on end. Then it would BSoD randomly. Then it wouldn't even boot to Windows. Sometimes it would freeze in the BIOS trying to change options. It would run fine with 7/4.5 when I divised the BH-5 to 200MHz, but not 216 or 237. No amount of voltage to CPU/NB/LDT/SB/Mem alleviated it, nor timings/drive strength/buffers. She's been running Prime stable for half a day at 294 HTT with MAL8/RP5 ATM and no BSoD/3D CTD at all in a couple weeks.

edit- playing around with RP @ 4.5. Seems the stability came from a certain VID/Special VID and MAL@8.
 
4 sticks of ram will DEFINITELY hurt your overclock.

No question.

I know from direct and bitter experience with this in my current computer (see sig). I have 4 sticks and my CPU oc is limited to 2850mhz because of having 4 sticks. With 2 sticks I can reach the magic 2900mhz and beyond. The reason is that with 4 sticks I can't use a 3/2 divider without games crashing instantly. With a 6/5 divider it's more stable but then my ram starts holding me back.

So yeah, definitely spend more to get 2x 1 gig sticks. I wish I'd done that rather than getting 4x512 like you're thinking of doing.
 
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