dr_st wrote:

Where do you get this information about "known for using inferior chips bought on the black market for rejects from the original manufacturers"? You either made that up or quote some idiot 'on the internets'... I think that it's not a case of "unreliable RAM" as much as a case of "unreliable sources".

It is well-known:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCZ#Reliability_history
https://www.storagereview.com/corsair_issues_ … es_3_ssd_recall

Most times inferior RAM gets undetected because users are accustomed to blame Windows for crashes.
But it is telltale that these companies who sell the rebranded non-premium dies from the manufacturers do not participate in the server RAM market, where ECC is standard and would instantly reveal the real quality of their RAMs.

dr_st wrote:

Could it be you are also not aware that every RAM stick manufacturer (OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, Hynix, you-name-it) has multiple lineups, from cheap low-end, high-latency "value RAM" (which may also not be super-reliable) all the way to expensive "overclockers" RAM? No, that's impossible - I am sure you are aware of that.

There are only a number of chip manufacturers.
See this chart to see the actual manufacturers: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271726/gl … ors-since-2010/
All other "manufacturers" are actually only rebranders.

For example, of those you listed above, only Hynix is chip manufacturer. The others rebrand chips from the manufacturers.
The manufacturers test and categorize every and each one of the chips in deep detail.
Only the finest chips are branded with the manufacturer's logo.
The others go to rebranders.
For example, Kingston is one of the few reputable rebranders. They rebrand only stuff which is still of good quality.
Lesser quality costs less, and so you observe thousands of fantasy memory "brands" that appear and disappear.
Corsair and OCZ are just examples of rebranders who took too much risk in this kind of gamble game of remarketing inferior stuff as "quality stuff".

16GB of ddr2 puts a lot of stress on the memory controller, regardless of anything else. You can try finding a compatibility list for your motherboard and try to look for any modules that have already been tested. I doubt it would take ECC and.or registered memory either

What is the application? If you're building a beast system, you can get ddr2 1200mhz in 2gb sticks
If you're running VMs and the like, there are lots of server boards out there that take registered memory, which is a lot easier to find in large sticks

retardware wrote:

It is well-known:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCZ#Reliability_history
https://www.storagereview.com/corsair_issues_ … es_3_ssd_recall]

Why do you post stories about SSD reliability in a discussion about DRAM? And while you're at it, why don't you do a simple Google search to find reliability issues with every single memory manufacturer out there? P.S. as far as it is from the topic, Sandforce SSD issues affected not only Corsair/OCZ, but everyone who used it, including Intel.

To me this just proves that you made the whole thing up or extrapolated from unrelated data.

retardware wrote:

There are only a number of chip manufacturers. See this chart to see the actual manufacturers: https://www.statista.com/statisti […]
Show full quote

dr_st wrote:

Could it be you are also not aware that every RAM stick manufacturer (OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, Hynix, you-name-it) has multiple lineups, from cheap low-end, high-latency "value RAM" (which may also not be super-reliable) all the way to expensive "overclockers" RAM? No, that's impossible - I am sure you are aware of that.

There are only a number of chip manufacturers.
See this chart to see the actual manufacturers: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271726/gl … ors-since-2010/
All other "manufacturers" are actually only rebranders.

This is all well-known (note that I said 'RAM stick' manufacturers - I am well aware that most of them don't manufacture the actual chips). That still does not tell anything about the quality of chips used by different vendor (even the vendors who manufacture their own chips).

retardware wrote:

Only the finest chips are branded with the manufacturer's logo.
The others go to rebranders.

That's bullcrap. Chips are differentiated by price according to quality, and any kind of chip can go to any memory rebrander, depending on how much they want to pay for it.

retardware wrote:

For example, Kingston is one of the few reputable rebranders. They rebrand only stuff which is still of good quality.

Really? Maybe you want to look up some horrors about "Kingston Value RAM"? Or some of their SSDs, for that matter (as if it's related)?

retardware wrote:

Lesser quality costs less, and so you observe thousands of fantasy memory "brands" that appear and disappear.

Exactly. There are plenty of "fake"/ "generic" brands. Corsair/OCZ are not among these. They are reputable brands that have been around for a long time and often offer lifetime warranty on their products.

Please stop spreading unfounded misinformation.

Not sure why you need 16 gigs though, because for games it's useless. If you want to really max out - 8 gigs with FSB overclocking should be much better.

It is well-known:

This has nothing to do with "black markets". OCZ was just pushing chips too far without proper testing, which eventually lead to their downfall. OCZ, Corsair and many other manufacturers of that kind mostly sell preoverclocked memory. Overclocking is always a lottery.

The Corsair Force Series 3 SSDs were announced just a few weeks ago - boasting SandForce SF-2281 controllers

Here's your problem. Corsair has nothing to do with it.

you can get ddr2 1200mhz in 2gb sticks

They're mediocre at best. Practically none of that memory is capable of doing 1200mhz with 5-5-5-15, only 6-6-6-18 (premium modules) or worse. Although it does not matter, because 775 platform can't make use of such high clocks anyway.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

This has nothing to do with "black markets". OCZ was just pushing chips too far without proper testing, which eventually lead to their downfall. OCZ, Corsair and many other manufacturers of that kind mostly sell preoverclocked memory. Overclocking is always a lottery.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

you can get ddr2 1200mhz in 2gb sticks

They're mediocre at best. Practically none of that memory is capable of doing 1200mhz with 5-5-5-15, only 6-6-6-18 (premium modules) or worse. Although it does not matter, because 775 platform can't make use of such high clocks anyway.

Overclocking memory does get tested at their rated speeds.. I have a set of OCZ (lol) pc9600 reapers rated at 5-5-5 and they do that speed fine, but not on all motherboards. Once you get to the very fastest ratings, the motherboards and user experience becomes the limiting factor..

Either way.. after 10+ years, a lot of ram modules seem to fail because of old age.. i've thrown out 20+gb of DDR2 of all sorts of brands/speed ratings

Overclocking memory does get tested at their rated speeds

It does, but OCZ had very high failure rates.

Either way.. after 10+ years, a lot of ram modules seem to fail because of old age.. i've thrown out 20+gb of DDR2 of all sorts of brands/speed ratings

Even on low voltage? Most of OCed memory were dying due to extensive use on high voltage (2.2-2.4v) combined with bad cooling.

Mamba wrote:

Are you sure about that? I see Tons of “AMD only” sticks of 4gb ddr2 around. ECC only registered (FB-Dimm), . Could you point to […]
Show full quote

mockingbird wrote:

You can certainly use 16GB on boards that document only an 8GB limit... P35 will also work.

Asus boards are very relaxed with regard to memory compatibility when it comes to using ECC memory. So if you want to find 4GB DDR2 modules, look for the ECC variety, as they should be much more common.

I bought 32GB of it a while back for literally pennies on the dollar and it worked absolutely fine in my P5K-E.

Are you sure about that?
I see Tons of “AMD only” sticks of 4gb ddr2 around.
ECC only registered (FB-Dimm),
.
Could you point to something specific?

Not FB-DIMM, and not Registered DDR2 (i.e. not PC2-6400R and not PC2-6400P)

But PC2-6400E (ECC) will work in Asus boards, including old boards (I use 4 x 2GB ECC modules on my Asus P5B).

4GB PC2-6400E or PC2-5300E modules will work fine. I can't point you to anything specific, I can only tell you that they work for me. They won't work with all board manufacturers, but Asus is fine.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Either way.. after 10+ years, a lot of ram modules seem to fail because of old age.. i've thrown out 20+gb of DDR2 of all sorts of brands/speed ratings

Even on low voltage? Most of OCed memory were dying due to extensive use on high voltage (2.2-2.4v) combined with bad cooling.

I don't know what it is, but even sitting in a RAM tray, i've experienced a decent amount of failures - moreso than any other computer component. It doesn't seem to matter what speed or voltage ratings either

mockingbird wrote on 2019-02-10, 07:27:

Not FB-DIMM, and not Registered DDR2 (i.e. not PC2-6400R and not PC2-6400P) […]
Show full quote

Mamba wrote:

Are you sure about that? I see Tons of “AMD only” sticks of 4gb ddr2 around. ECC only registered (FB-Dimm), . Could you point to […]
Show full quote

mockingbird wrote:

You can certainly use 16GB on boards that document only an 8GB limit... P35 will also work.

Asus boards are very relaxed with regard to memory compatibility when it comes to using ECC memory. So if you want to find 4GB DDR2 modules, look for the ECC variety, as they should be much more common.

I bought 32GB of it a while back for literally pennies on the dollar and it worked absolutely fine in my P5K-E.

Are you sure about that?
I see Tons of “AMD only” sticks of 4gb ddr2 around.
ECC only registered (FB-Dimm),
.
Could you point to something specific?

Not FB-DIMM, and not Registered DDR2 (i.e. not PC2-6400R and not PC2-6400P)

But PC2-6400E (ECC) will work in Asus boards, including old boards (I use 4 x 2GB ECC modules on my Asus P5B).

4GB PC2-6400E or PC2-5300E modules will work fine. I can't point you to anything specific, I can only tell you that they work for me. They won't work with all board manufacturers, but Asus is fine.

Hi, can you then reveal what specific modules worked for you? I am currently on the hunt myself, to find 2x4GB of at least 800MHz CL5 modules to build a mini retro system to play old games without compatibility issues.
Cheers!

I had 2x2GB Patriot DDR2-800 on my Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 back in the day at 400*8. Lovely machine. Realistically for a machine of this age, 8GB should be plenty, so 4x2GB would be ideal. 800MHz is fine for memory, although it would be interesting to see what 1200MHz could do, as it also works well with the FSB:RAM dividers; from what I can see, 1200MHz RAM can give anything up to a 10% boost, depending on the application being used.

With the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard and a Q6600 G0, the max FSB I was able to get was 480Mhz for a DDR2 speed of 960 and I was using 4x 2GB DDR2-1066 sticks. Never tried it with less sticks.

That was with the CPU about at the max Ghz it was stable at though. I think the fsb was able to go a tiny bit higher but I had to lower the CPU multiplier to get there so it wasn't worth it.

Not sure if the newer CPUs are capable of higher FSB or not as I have never tried.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-20, 16:05:

With the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard and a Q6600 G0, the max FSB I was able to get was 480Mhz for a DDR2 speed of 960 and I was using 4x 2GB DDR2-1066 sticks. Never tried it with less sticks.

That was with the CPU about at the max Ghz it was stable at though. I think the fsb was able to go a tiny bit higher but I had to lower the CPU multiplier to get there so it wasn't worth it.

Not sure if the newer CPUs are capable of higher FSB or not as I have never tried.

400MHz was a bit of a stretch as I then had to add a fan to the Northbridge cooler, although I think the UD3P may have had a heat pipe? I definitely remember seeing the FSB:RAM divider in the BIOS that meant you could run at 400MHz FSB / 600MHz RAM (1200MHz DDR), although my RAM was never good enough to try this, so maybe it wouldn't be stable.

I wonder what the uplift would be by switching to a 45nm processor - know it wouldn't affect RAM as its not on the CPU on this generation, just more of a general curiosity.

RichB93 wrote on 2020-10-21, 08:43:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-10-20, 16:05:

With the Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard and a Q6600 G0, the max FSB I was able to get was 480Mhz for a DDR2 speed of 960 and I was using 4x 2GB DDR2-1066 sticks. Never tried it with less sticks.

That was with the CPU about at the max Ghz it was stable at though. I think the fsb was able to go a tiny bit higher but I had to lower the CPU multiplier to get there so it wasn't worth it.

Not sure if the newer CPUs are capable of higher FSB or not as I have never tried.

400MHz was a bit of a stretch as I then had to add a fan to the Northbridge cooler, although I think the UD3P may have had a heat pipe? I definitely remember seeing the FSB:RAM divider in the BIOS that meant you could run at 400MHz FSB / 600MHz RAM (1200MHz DDR), although my RAM was never good enough to try this, so maybe it wouldn't be stable.

I wonder what the uplift would be by switching to a 45nm processor - know it wouldn't affect RAM as its not on the CPU on this generation, just more of a general curiosity.

UD3P does have a heatpipe cooler.

For LGA775, you always want to run the FSB/RAM 1:1. I spent waaaaaaaayyyyy too much time benchmarking to think otherwise.

Those CPUs love high FSB as far as performance goes. I would take a 480fsb with DDR-960 over 400fsb with DDR2-1200 any day.

The higher RAM clock is only going to help the throughput from RAM to chipset.. but then you end up with delays going from the chipset to the CPU.

dr_st wrote on 2019-02-02, 16:11:

I can't see any scenario in this reality where 4GB DDR2 desktop sticks are worth hunting for, if they exist.

If you want 16G RAM for P45, find a DDR3 board.

i have 2 Sticks of 4Gb DDR2 in my Athlon X4 Machine, but for AMD they are a lot easier to get..

There are 4GB DDR2 DIMMs that are not ECC Reg. I have a set of 4 that were supposed to work on only a few specific AMD boards (the chipsets were PCIE 2 and they could also run DDR2 1066 I think).

I stuck one into an Intel Core2 board and it actually worked and shows up as 4GB (this is an odd Acer board with built in video I use for home theater). Most C2D boards just beep when you install the RAM.

Bottom line: you need 1 or 2 GB 5-5-5-15 DDR2 1066 Mhz rated RAM sticks for good FSB overclocking and overall performance. If you want MOAR RAM with good oveclocking capabilities, your only choice is DDR3 motherboard.

I had a personal system that is now at my nephew fully working with 16gb:
Q9650@ 3600mhz
MSI P45D3 platinum
4*4gb DDR3 1600 Corsair
SSD: 512gb Intel
HDD: 1.000gb WD
MSI GTX 560 ti 1gb later replaced with GTX 9602gb
The system did utilize over 8gb of RAM hovering around 10gb if Chrome was opened and/or some game was running. It always felt like the GTX 560 ti bottlenecking the Q9650 and not the other way around! In fact performance was improved in games quite a lot after the change of GPU.

Chrome and modern web browsing in general is a special topic. They consume RAM in large quantity.

dr_st wrote on 2019-02-02, 16:11:

I can't see any scenario in this reality where 4GB DDR2 desktop sticks are worth hunting for, if they exist.

If you want 16G RAM for P45, find a DDR3 board.

While your advice is generally speaking correct, you cannot deny the interest in wanting to max out any particular system, which imo is a scenario within reality.
Having said that, I too have looked into getting larger sized DDR2 modules and these seemed harder to find in larger sizes.

There seemed to be plenty of the registered modules around though, with sketchy compatibility it seemed?

retardware wrote on 2019-02-04, 15:43:

Another general note regarding memories: I would advise to absolutely avoid brands like OCZ and Corsair, which are known for using inferior chips bought on the black market for rejects from the original manufacturers. Unreliable RAMs are a major fun killer...

retardware wrote on 2019-02-06, 02:50:

It is well-known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCZ#Reliability_history https://www.storagereview.com/corsair_issues_ … es_3_ssd […]
Show full quote

dr_st wrote:

Where do you get this information about "known for using inferior chips bought on the black market for rejects from the original manufacturers"? You either made that up or quote some idiot 'on the internets'... I think that it's not a case of "unreliable RAM" as much as a case of "unreliable sources".

It is well-known:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCZ#Reliability_history
https://www.storagereview.com/corsair_issues_ … es_3_ssd_recall

Most times inferior RAM gets undetected because [snip]

Those articles are not about RAM and the experience you claim of this knowledge to be generic and publicly widely accepted as fact is untrue.

I've personally had good experiences with OCZ memory modules (iirc I got several of their DDR3 kits for my LAN rigs). I never tried overclocking them though as this is something I don't typically do.

I won't deny them having used (what could be regarded as) scummy business practices, but there are very few companies that haven't ever been so. This falls beyond the scope of this thread though so I'm gonna leave it at this.

I'd also be interested to learn where you got your information from (not from the links you gave), though your explanation in itself does seem plausible.