RAM Speed

[Fatelinha]

So I downloaded CPU-Z in my old PC and it says my memory speed is only 400 Mhz

  

 

My processor is a Core2 Duo E2180 and my motherboard is Asus P5G41T-M LX3, shouldn't I be able to crack it up a bit?

[Tsuki]

that motherboard should be able to support up to 8GB of 1066MHz ram.

 

so yes you should be able to crank it up a lot

[Strator]

You speed is registering at 400MHz because, DDR stands for Double Data Rate. So, you have to double the reported speed to get the effective speed. It looks like your RAM is operating correctly for 800MHz DDR3. You could overclock but memory speed has little affect in everyday use outside a few specific programs. Also for older hardware like yours, the low latency 6-6-6-15, of your RAM has more of a benefit than the higher bandwidth that would come from increasing the speed. More than likely if you overclocked the speed you would have to loosen the timings.

[Jetster]

You speed is registering at 400MHz because, DDR stands for Double Data Rate. So, you have to double the reported speed to get the effective speed. It looks like your RAM is operating correctly for 800MHz DDR3. You could overclock but memory speed has little affect in everyday use outside a few specific programs. Also for older hardware like yours, the low latency 6-6-6-15, of your RAM has more of a benefit than the higher bandwidth that would come from increasing the speed. More than likely if you overclocked the speed you would have to loosen the timings.

 

Its only running in single channel. So its 400 MHz not 800

 

Aslo this was the first of the DDR3 boards and its 775 socket. It will not run as fast as newer DDR3 boards will. But the board shoould do dual channel if ihe configures it correctly

 

Read the motherboard manual

[Strator]

Its only running in single channel. So its 400 MHz not 800

 

Aslo this was the first of the DDR3 boards and its 775 socket. It will not run as fast as newer DDR3 boards will. But the board shoould do dual channel if ihe configures it correctly

 

Read the motherboard manual

It is still running at 800MHz, DDR and dual channel are two different things, even with one slot occupied it will still be double data rate. The data rate is determined by the memory type; the motherboard, number of sticks or anything else does not affect this. If he had two sticks then it would be dual channel and more bandwidth would be available to the CPU, but it does not affect the speed or data rate of the modules themselves. Think of dual channel like RAID 0 with two drives, not totally the same thing but close enough.

 

Again, with hardware of the era timings are more important than speed. Also with that CPU the RAM will not be the bottleneck in the system unless he is using the 4GB up then he would just need to buy more RAM, the CPU is going to be the limiting factor in the build.

[Jetster]

Thanks, Not sure where I got that from. So its bandwith not speed. To the OP even if you got it to run at the boards max speed your not going to see the difference. But getting it to run in dual channel will give you about 10%