Overclocking

Every enthusiast knows, stock and recommended specs are only for the common folk. Pushing beyond these rated settings is where the fun is at. Overclocking is not an exact science. It varies greatly as it is influenced by a number of factors. Some of these factors can be controlled by the overclocker, some not. For example, memory chips designed from the same wafer can vary in the maximum speeds they can run at. This is how the manufacturer may rate the maximum stable speed that the chip can run at. Therefore, the maximum overclock that these chips reach may not be representative of other memory sticks in this range of products.

To overclock I first tested by setting the RAM at speeds of 1066 MHz, 1333 MHz and 1600 MHz while CPU and NB were at stock frequencies. On the last one, bus was overclocked to reach the maximum RAM overclock. As a result CPU and NorthBridge were also overclocked.

I was able to overclock the memory to a maximum overclock of 1720 MHz. This is not a very large increase, but large enough to allow some leg room for your CPU overclock. The memory was running at a voltage of 1.7V. I tried to raise the votlage to 1.92V but wasn’t able to go over this frequency. That may also be attributed to the fact that I am not using the most overclocking friendly motherboard.

Underclocking

While overclocking is important, I also wanted to see how tight I could run the timings on these modules at various speeds to reduce the latency. Therefore, the timings shown in the results are the lowest that these modules would do at the shown speed. I was surprised by how tight this kit could run at 1066 MHz. At this speed, I could tighten the timings to 6-6-5-15 and run the kit comfortably at 1066 MHz. These timings are right in the vicinity of DDR2 memory timing category. Most DDR2 kits these days can do 1066 Mhz at CL5 timings.

I was pleasantly surprised that I could lower the timings at the rated speed of 1600 MHz to 8-8-7-21 which are lower than those advertised (9-9-9-27).