When overclocking anything, it's the luck of the draw. Not every seemingly identical kit will clock the same. You're unlucky that your kit doesn't overclock, another of the same model and specs might overclock amazingly.

I've read its not the kit that's the problem its the fact that I'm using the Z77 platform. Apparently Z77 cpu's IMC will struggle with anything above 2400mhz (but my board supports 2600mhz OC). Is that true? The original owner said he ran the sticks @2933 mhz on his Z97 board. I can't even get 2800mhz out of them. Won't even boot no matter the timing. But back to my original question should I just keep the ram I have now and run them at 2400 9-12-11 (which seems to perform quite fast actually) or go for the 2gb x 2 Dominators 7.1 and hopefully hit 2600mhz 8-11-11-32?

That is borderline timing if you change by one step and is no good is low quality or way too pushed too hard and these timing is too loose. Step down to 2133 or 1866 and play with timings might yield better results.

Cheers,

I would keep the Xtreem and not gamble on the Dominators. It won't be much faster and they may or may not OC well depending on the IC's used. It's not that it's an unbelievable claim since typically lower density RAM OC higher, it's just you can't be sure that a particular kit will do it without seeing it happen first. Or, you could always try more voltage to the IMC or RAM if you're determined.

It's as stated above, there is no guarantee. That's why overclockers change the same product or products multiple times and there is a lot of money loosing involved. Also another thing, some great overclock components will not perform as good on all motherboards. If you really what to push it higher, search on the forums for what's the highest speed obtained on your exact motherboard and with what type of memory was achieved, from the start, otherwise you will find yourself in the position that you have to sell a component because it does not perform as expected. You have to find the best frequency/latency combo, the one that will bring you the best and most stable bandwidth. The problem is that he's not specifying how many motherboards/kits he has swapped to achieve that. That's why i, personally, accept what i achieve in this area from the first time (rarely second time), i'm not rich,never been, so i don't have money to overspend.

Ok I'm using 1.77 volts to get 16gb 2400mhz 9-12-11 stable. Are these timings good or not? The ram sticks handle that voltage with no problem they don't even get warm. I don't really know enough about safe IMC voltage though. Btw to get 4.7ghz stable on my cpu i have to use 1.448 volts with offset.

My guess is that you need to look up a guide for overclocking.

You need to keep a certain voltage difference range between the IMC voltage and the RAM voltage to be safe if I remember correctly.

Other voltages are going to make a difference as will sub-timings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/wiki/ram/ddr3

General rule: higher density chips tend to have more lax timings and/or low operating frequency, when compared to low density chips. 2666 with default timings is already top edge for most 8Gb modules, already being factory overclocked.
If you want best balance of timings and frequency - Elpida Hyper chips is way to go. But that's only 2Gb modules.

Elpida hypers aren't really worth it for regular use. Best for benchmarking records. Chips die at random and require more voltage than 1155 is specified to use (1.65). Elpida BBSE and Powerchip 2GB modules are ok option for cheaper price but timings / performance in synthetic benchmarks is almost same as your 2666mhz kit.

Corsair Dominator 1600mhz C8 can have anything from terrible to "ok" tier chips. V2.1 is hyper, 2.2 bbse and 7.1 PSC. https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/wiki/ra … 3/#wiki_corsair

The first generation Elpida Hypers is the fastest DDR3 memory ever made but the lifespan was about 6 months on average, much shorter if pushed to the limit. The second generation Hypers while still fragile (and a smidgen slower) was much better when it comes to lifespan and my quad kit of Dominator GT 2000 (8 8 8 so not a top bin) is still alive and kicking! 😁

But no, they are not worth the price these days. Except for extreme overclockers (a.k.a the people inflating the Hyper prices) most people want modules larger than 2GB.

I usually find the (on paper) slowest 8GB modules to be the best choice for the money when it comes to speedy DDR3! 😁 8GB modules with Micron chips usually can't do as tight primary timings as Hynix and Samsung but every kit I have tried can do TRRD 4 and TFAW 16 even at 2133++ MHz some even at 2400 MHz and they will usually also let you set TREF to the highest value. Some tasks prefer low latency mostly affected by the CAS and "Command Rate" timings others like throughput mostly affected by TRRD, TFAW and TREF.

This is what I'm running in my "basement computer". The system is pretty speedy considering the CPU is running @stock and that Sandy Bridge-E launched Q4 2011.

.

Stuff like decoding Youtube 4K (downsampled to 1080 because of the monitor) is hardly enough of a CPU-load to even register in the monitoring software.

I paid 300 SEK for the above Micron memory kit so about 27 euro.

So 9-12-11-260-1T is good enough for 2400? I wanted to ideally run 9-11-11 but it won't work no matter what the voltage is only 9-12-11 works. That being said my computer is already insanely fast for Windows XP. I have all EVO 970's. I am getting 30500 (or more) read speed in maxxMEM2. Its probably not going to get much better than that on my dual channel system is it?

djsabreblade wrote on 2023-04-20, 16:00:

So 9-12-11-260-1T is good enough for 2400? I wanted to ideally run 9-11-11 but it won't work no matter what the voltage is only 9-12-11 works. That being said my computer is already insanely fast for Windows XP. I have all EVO 970's. I am getting 30500 (or more) read speed in maxxMEM2. Its probably not going to get much better than that on my dual channel system is it?

9-12-11 @2400 is actually great but as I hinted above lots of performance improvement can be made by lowering the secondary timings and even the tertiary timings.

When you see people running 2400 with timings like 9 -10-10 then you can be pretty sure it's not a 24/7 viable setup. 😁

Ok thanks. I wish I had the courage to mess with secondary timings and tertiary timings but for now its on asus auto. I'll have to try and learn about them one day I suppose. But I mean its not as if when I click something it doesn't already open instantly. I mostly use the computer for audio related things.

For audio related things the most important memory settings should be memory speed, CAS latency and Command Rate (not necessarily in that order) as these affect the memory latency the most. I do not think you will be able to improve these with other memory modules.

Memory latency should (could, would) affect the DPC latency (as measured with LatencyMon) minimizing the risk of dropouts when recording.

If you are using Windows I suspect that some debloating could be beneficial and probably make more of an impact than secondary and tertiary memory timings! 😁

There's a couple of things you could do for secondary and tertiary timings. Your BIOS or CPU-Z might display the sub-timings for various speeds that the RAM is rated for. The sub-timings for the XMP profile are what you want to look at, or if you want to run the RAM at a lower speed than the XMP profile, then look at the timings under those headings in CPU-Z to get an idea of what you should set things at. Honestly, it's easy and you won't break your hardware by trying, you just might have to clear the BIOS and try again if the timings you chose wont boot.

Here's original DDR3 list from TaPaKaH (better formatting and pictures):

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthrea … -DDR3-IC-thread