Help understanding RAM speeds

J

Jon Boy

New Member
I have had a look around the internet and have found articles that are either way to detailed or not detailed enough. I would like some help understanding RAM speeds and how that relates to what I see in CPU-Z

First of all, I understand the latencies to a degree so we can skip over the RAM timings. What I'm confused at is the speeds of the RAM and what I see in CPU-Z, in particular triple channel RAM.

For example my RAM is triple channel and rated at 1600Mhz but I understand unless I overclock my CPU it will be running slower than this (which explains the lowered latency)



From the above screen-shot
a) How do I work out what speed it is actually running at
b) What is the NB Frequency
c) What is the DRAM Frequency
 
Your ram is only running at 1066mhz, hence the reason why it says 533. You will need to maually change the frequency and timings in the bios to make it run at desired speed.
 
Just to check, I double the DRAM frequency to find my RAM speed? This will be true for Dual and Triple chanel RAM? I ask because if I triple it it comes out to 1599.
 
DDR = Double Data Rate. Your RAM is running at 1066mhz. Did you look in the BIOS for any option to change the speed like John said?
 
Not yet, I just wanted to understand what the speeds meant before blindly overclocking anything.

Thank you everyone
 
Just to check, I double the DRAM frequency to find my RAM speed? This will be true for Dual and Triple chanel RAM? I ask because if I triple it it comes out to 1599.
Click to expand...
You double it because it's DDR (Double Data Rate) so the effective speed is double the DRAM frequency, regardless of channels, clapton already covered this. I feel the need to nitpick to avoid confusion, though: the keyword here is effective. So while the effective speed is double the DRAM frequency, the module still runs at the DRAM frequency, it just transfers data twice each clock cycle. It would be more accurate to say that a 1600MHz module (with DRAM frequency of 800MHz) runs at 1600MTs (megatransfers per second), but the whole MHz vs MTs business is kinda like the old clip vs magazine argument... nobody cares if you use the technically incorrect term as long as the point comes across, but I thought I'd clear this out anyway to remove the possibility of confusion ("how can it run at both 800MHz and 1600MHz at the same time").
 
Jon Boy said:
Not yet, I just wanted to understand what the speeds meant before blindly overclocking anything.

Thank you everyone
Click to expand...

It would not be overclocking it. Your RAM is designed to run at those speeds. Its just some motherboards have to have you manually set up high performance RAM.
 
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