The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    RAM only running at 400mhz

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by Stoned Hippy, Sep 26, 2008.

  1. Stoned Hippy

    Stoned Hippy Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    37
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    16
    I upgraded my M1330 to 4GB ram a while back. I bought pc-6400 ram as it was the same price as 5400 with the same timings so I thought why not? Just incase I want to use it in another laptop which may support 800MHz RAM.

    The problem is that I was just running CPU-z and noticed that it only gives me timings up to 400MHz and never seems to show my RAM running at more than 332.4MHz even when stressing the RAM using ORTHOS.

    Is my RAM really only running at 332.4MHz or is CPU-z just reading it wrong? I don't know any other programs for testing RAM speed, could anyone suggest any?

    I've attached a screen shot of the timings table in CPU-z.

    Thanks,
    S.h.
     

    Attached Files:

    Stoned Hippy, Sep 26, 2008
    #1
  2. SmoothTofu

    SmoothTofu Inspiron 1420 Owner

    Reputations:
    64
    Messages:
    1,481
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    This is because RAM runs in dual-channel, so 400MHz refers to the specified 800MHz. Also, the top speed of 332MHz you're getting is because the Santa Rosa chipset supports a top frequency of 667MHz, do it gets downclocked.
     
    SmoothTofu, Sep 26, 2008
    #2
  3. Stoned Hippy

    Stoned Hippy Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    1
    Messages:
    37
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Awesome, so it's 332MHz per channel and I have 2 channels.

    I knew about the downclocking alright, pity it doesn't run at 800 but there you go.

    Back to overclocking my graphics card!

    Thanks,
    S.h.
     
    Stoned Hippy, Sep 26, 2008
    #3
  4. Hep!

    Hep! sees beauty in everything

    Reputations:
    1,806
    Messages:
    5,921
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    206
    SmoothTofu is almost there - it's not because it's dual channel but because it's dual data rate (DDR). So you double the frequency that CPU-Z is giving you, which is ~667, or PC5300.
     
    Hep!, Sep 26, 2008
    #4