SDram Timing

[Bob The Great]

I was just puttering around my bios. And I ran across these settings "Bank 0/1 Dram Timing", "Bank 2/3 Dram Timing", and "Bank 4/5 Dram Timing". The options for them are "Normal, Medium, Fast, Turbo, Sdram 10ns, Sdram 8ns". I know it has to do with my memory, and it's set to normal. Will setting it to fast or one of the other settings speed up my memory?

P-3 600Mhz EB
192Mhz pc-100 mem
8Gb seagate HD
BCM/GVC GT693VA
Award Bios

[Mykex]

Yes if you have high quality/speed ram I would try turbo/8ns. Ok truthfully even if I didnt think my ram could take it I would still try. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Ohh and bank 0/1 would be 1st ram slot,2/3 2nd,ect.

[This message has been edited by Mykex (edited 04-24-2001).]

[Bob The Great]

Thanks! My I'm not sure if my mem is super quality. So I'll try some of the slower settings first. What sort of problems could I incounter with setting it to faster speeds. Also 10ns is slower then 8ns right?

Thanks!

[DanU]

I think the order is, from slowest to fastes

10ns > 8ns > normal > medium > fast > turbo

The only way to find out your fastest speed is to try it and see. If you start getting memory errors, you know you went too far.

[Hellmund]

Ram is kinda like cpu's, some can take a lot more than others. I got PC100 CL3 Generic Ram and I got it running on Turbo, 4-way interleave and 4k D-ram page mode. Havn't had any problems even though it's also running at 110mhz.
In Sandra I get Int ALU/RAM 422mb/s
Float FPU/RAM 449mb/s
I'd post the pic but the postmypic site won't respond.

[Kuasimodem]

On my Abit KT7-RAID I'm running my PC133 ram at 136Mhz, with 4-way interleave, 4k DRAM page, CAS2, and Turbo. Considering that it's Micron PC133 CAS3 SDRAM, I think it's doing pretty good.

[samwichse]

The only thing you're in danger of doing by going to far with setting is making your system unstable. You won't damage your ram, and if it doesn't work, then set it back some and try again. I've 128mb of generic pc133 cas3 @133 with 4 way interleave, page mode, turbo timing, no problems in a year so far.

[Bob The Great]

Thanks for the replies! I tested that stuff out. It didn't do much of anything. So instead I oc'd my mem (192Mbs pc-100) to 133Mhz! It's running great, and now my whole PC is around 10% faster! It spead up my HD access, CPU mathmatics, 3D, almost everything! It's been about two days @ 133Mhz, and so far not a glitch! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[samwichse]

Go for the gold, the 4 way interleave especially helps. If it doesn't work, then no big loss, and if it does, then you're that much faster...

[Bob The Great]

OK! This is so sweeeet! I got the 10% system increase! Right! But still my mem was lagging far behind! So I go over to VIA's web site and see this little util called interleave or something like that. Any way I download it. It reprograms my chipset, and now I'm getting some really cool mem benchmarks! Here they are (usuing Sandra 2001)!
Alu/Fpu
Before: 130/147
After o/c: 149/157
After util: 296/331

This is sweet! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif