RAM Question

[Guest]

I have 16GB of DDR3-1866 spread across four sticks, populating all the slots on my mobo. I downloaded CPU-Z to get some info on my RAM but am a little confused as to what it's reporting. Two questions come to mind.

 

1. Why is my speed not at 1866 MHz?

2. Is all my RAM running at dual channel even though all slots are populated?

 

Apologies if these have obvious answers staring me in the face, but I'm just not understanding. Thanks!

[Jurrunio]

That's the wrong tab, this one shows the SPD profiles programmed into the memory sticks but not the actual operating specs. The right one is the memory tab.

 

It is normal to read half the frequency because DDR memory sends data twice per clock cycle, 1866MHz is the data rate (and so is how memory frequency is usually said).

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

That's the wrong tab, this one shows the SPD profiles programmed into the memory sticks but not the actual operating specs. The right one is the memory tab.

 

It is normal to read half the frequency because DDR memory sends data twice per clock cycle, 1866MHz is the data rate (and so is how memory frequency is usually said).

Well I saw that tab but I didn't understand most of it. So where it says Channel #, I guess that tells me that I am indeed running dual channel on all sticks?

[Jurrunio]

Just now, Stylized_Violence said:

Well I saw that tab but I didn't understand most of it. So where it says Channel #, I guess that tells me that I am indeed running dual channel on all sticks?

Yes, but while it somehow doesn't show the memory frequency, 1:5 FSB:DRAM ratio points to I think 1333MHz

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Yes, but while it somehow doesn't show the memory frequency, 1:5 FSB:DRAM ratio points to I think 1333MHz

DRAM Frequency populated, it says 666 MHz. Per your post earlier, multiplying by two gives me 1333 MHz. So I guess my RAM isn't running at full speed. For the record I looked in the BIOS and it also is reporting 1333MHz for some reason.

[Elequi]

XMP may not be enabled.

9 minutes ago, Stylized_Violence said:

DRAM Frequency populated, it says 666 MHz. Per your post earlier, multiplying by two gives me 1333 MHz. So I guess my RAM isn't running at full speed. For the record I looked in the BIOS and it also is reporting 1333MHz for some reason.

 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Elequi said:

XMP may not be enabled.

 

You were right, XMP was not enabled. So I ticked the box to turn it on and my computer fails to start. Says there was a problem and gives me that list of troubleshooting tips. Lovely. Oh well. I guess there wouldn't be that much difference between 1333 and 1866 eh?

 

EDIT: Managed to get it working; I loaded BIOS defaults and then engaged XMP and it worked. I'm now running at the correct speed. There must have been a conflicting setting somewhere (last time I was in BIOS was over two years ago) but starting from scratch seems to have gotten it work. I'll do a stability test later but everything seems good. Thanks all!

Edited December 3, 2019 by Guest

[Elequi]

Typically xmp adjusts some CPU related settings, so that could have been related. Glad you got it.