Free Memory benchmarking.

[_Grid21]

So I've been wanting to see what the difference is between 1333Mhz speed and 1600Mhz. The problem is I don't really have a real way to test memory speed and programs like AID64 hide some of the results unless you pay for their software. Third party software's have really weird of confusing results when they finish. What's a good understandable memory benchmark software that is easy to understand and help determine the difference in clock speed? 

 

I've used CPU-Z before but when it showed my memory clock is showed it at a slower clock speed than what was actually set in the Bios. Windows task manager isn't much of a help either because it says my memory is 1600Mhz yet CPU-z says other wise. This is why I wanted to benchmark the memory and understand what speed is it actually running at. http://prntscr.com/ckq9g9

[TheRandomness]

CPU-Z is correct with your memory speed. DDR = Double Data Rate so DDR3-1600 is actually 800.

[Imakuni]

6 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

I've used CPU-Z before but when it showed my memory clock is showed it at a slower clock speed than what was actually set in the Bios. Windows task manager isn't much of a help either because it says my memory is 1600Mhz yet CPU-z says other wise. This is why I wanted to benchmark the memory and understand what speed is it actually running at. http://prntscr.com/ckq9g9

Did you know: DDR doesn't run at the labeled speed. It actually runs at half of that speed. So if the label says "1600mhz", it's actually running at 800mhz, which is what CPU-Z reports.

 

Your RAM is running fine, don't worry.

[_Grid21]

1 minute ago, TheRandomness said:

CPU-Z is correct with your memory speed. DDR = Double Data Rate so DDR3-1600 is actually 800.

Why is it 800 when 1600 is set in the bios? That doesn't make sense to me? Can you explain?

[porina]

CPU-Z lists the real clock, which is half the marketing clock almost everyone else uses to make numbers sound bigger. For a free measure you can try http://www.maxxpi.net/pages/downloads/maxxmemsup2---preview.php for starters.

[TheRandomness]

1 minute ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

Why is it 800 when 1600 is set in the bios? That doesn't make sense to me? Can you explain?

DDR = Double Data Rate. Basically, RAM can have data being inputted and outputted at the same time (afaik)

[_Grid21]

4 minutes ago, Imakuni said:

Did you know: DDR doesn't run at the labeled speed. It actually runs at half of that speed. So if the label says "1600mhz", it's actually running at 800mhz, which is what CPU-Z reports.

 

Your RAM is running fine, don't worry.

 

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, porina said:

CPU-Z lists the real clock, which is half the marketing clock almost everyone else uses to make numbers sound bigger. For a free measure you can try http://www.maxxpi.net/pages/downloads/maxxmemsup2---preview.php for starters.

 

 

 

4 minutes ago, Imakuni said:

 

 

 

Then why do we overclock ram if it's not even going to actually run at 1600Mhz?

[Imakuni]

5 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

Then why do we overclock ram if it's not even going to actually run at 1600Mhz?

Picture it like this: a truck has wheels, right? You can count them by the number of actual wheels or by the number of axis. One may say that a given truck has 6 wheels, when in reality it's just 3 axis.

 

What are you asking is "why we need 6 wheels if we only use 3 axis?".

 

You are comparing 2 different things here. The label on the sticks and the frequency you set on the mobo are reffering to the effective / useful speed. The actual, physical speed of the stick, however (which, btw, is what CPU-Z reports), it's half of that measure.

[porina]

1 minute ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

Then why do we overclock ram if it's not even going to actually run at 1600Mhz?

Wrong question. They're just two number scales describing the same thing. MHz is a scientific definition, like a tick of a second. But ram can effectively do two things per clock, and it is sometimes incorrectly called MHz. Some places describe it better as MT/s for mega-transactions per second.

[Tusk2435]

3 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

 

 

Then why do we overclock ram if it's not even going to actually run at 1600Mhz?

We OC RAM because in theory by doing that we increase performance of it. It IS going to run at 1600 MHz, they're not the real frequency though. As the others said, DDR means Double Data Rate, so the frequency you see on the box and the product page is double the real one. The motherboard, to avoid people extremely OCing their RAM (or just to make it more clear) displays the doubled frequency, so you can refer directly to the one you see on the product page. CPU-Z, to be 100% precise, tells you the real frequency, which is in fact half the advertised one. As an example, if you OC your 1600MHz stick to 2100MHz, you are indeed overclocking it, from 800MHz to 1050MHz (real frequency). It's just another way of writing the same thing, which is the number of cycles per second of the Memory stick.

[_Grid21]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Wrong question. They're just two number scales describing the same thing. MHz is a scientific definition, like a tick of a second. But ram can effectively do two things per clock, and it is sometimes incorrectly called MHz. Some places describe it better as MT/s for mega-transactions per second.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Imakuni said:

Picture it like this: a truck has wheels, right? You can count them by the number of actual wheels or by the number of axis. One may say that a given truck has 6 wheels, when in reality it's just 3 axis.

 

What are you asking is "why we need 6 wheels if we only use 3 axis?".

 

You are comparing 2 different things here. The label on the sticks and the frequency you set on the mobo are reffering to the effective / useful speed. The actual, physical speed of the stick, however (which, btw, is what CPU-Z reports), it's half of that measure.

 

Where does the term timing come in then? How does that play into "Mhz" speed and such? How does tining a timing help?

[Imakuni]

1 minute ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

Where does the term timing come in then? How does that play into "Mhz" speed and such? How does tining a timing help?

"Timings", also called "latency" (again, a matter of reffering to the same thing, although using a different criterea).

 

To try and make it simple, it's about how quickly the RAM can respond to different types of requests. Think of it as pizza delivery: timing/latency is how fast they can process your request and get the pizza ready (the lower, the better) and mhz is just how fast the delivery boy can get to you (the higher, the better).

 

In general, don't worry about it unless you want to OC your RAM and dive deep into it. Though I don't think that's the case here, otherwise you wouldn't even be asking in the first place.

[_Grid21]

14 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

We OC RAM because in theory by doing that we increase performance of it. It IS going to run at 1600 MHz, they're not the real frequency though. As the others said, DDR means Double Data Rate, so the frequency you see on the box and the product page is double the real one. The motherboard, to avoid people extremely OCing their RAM (or just to make it more clear) displays the doubled frequency, so you can refer directly to the one you see on the product page. CPU-Z, to be 100% precise, tells you the real frequency, which is in fact half the advertised one. As an example, if you OC your 1600MHz stick to 2100MHz, you are indeed overclocking it, from 800MHz to 1050MHz (real frequency). It's just another way of writing the same thing, which is the number of cycles per second of the Memory stick.

 

8 minutes ago, Imakuni said:

"Timings", also called "latency" (again, a matter of reffering to the same thing, although using a different criterea).

 

To try and make it simple, it's about how quickly the RAM can respond to different types of requests. Think of it as pizza delivery: timing/latency is how fast they can process your request and get the pizza ready (the lower, the better) and mhz is just how fast the delivery boy can get to you (the higher, the better).

 

In general, don't worry about it unless you want to OC your RAM and dive deep into it. Though I don't think that's the case here, otherwise you wouldn't even be asking in the first place.

This kinda makes my brain hurt. Does that mean that I am actally running at a slower speed then 1600 and there for have a slower system then the actual 1600? And does that also mean that DDR2 800 is actually 400? If the actual speed is 800, which is really slow, then why not just tell consumers it's 800 instead of talking about a "fake" speed?

[Tusk2435]

Just now, Josh_Grid21 said:

 

This kinda makes my brain hurt. Does that mean that I am actally running at a slower speed then 1600 and there for have a slower system then the actual 1600? And does that also mean that DDR2 800 is actually 400? If the actual speed is 800, which is really slow, then why not just tell consumers it's 800 instead of talking about a "fake" speed?

1- You're running at 1600MHz because CPU-Z tells 800 (which again is half the advertised one).
2- DDR, DDR2, DDR3 and DDR4 have ALL the same concept of double data rate, so yes, an 800MHz DDR2 stick is running at a real speed of 400MHz.
3- Have you ever heard about marketing? You know that thing that makes companies rich? That's the reason for this "fake" RAM frequency and many other things that make consumers buy products.

[Imakuni]

4 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

This kinda makes my brain hurt.

It's really not hard, you just have to understand what's going on. It's all a matter of therms: understand what they are reffering to and it'll all make sense pretty easily.

Just now, Josh_Grid21 said:

Does that mean that I am actally running at a slower speed then 1600 and there for have a slower system then the actual 1600?

In therms of actual, physical frequency, yes, it's running slower than 1600mhz (800mhz to be precise)

 

In therms of effective speed, however, you are running at those full 1600mhz. Again, because it does TWO operations on a single cycle, it's the same as if it was running at twice the speed it's physically running at, comparing to only doing one operation at a time.

5 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

And does that also mean that DDR2 800 is actually 400?

If the label says "800mhz", then yes, it's actually running at 400mhz.

5 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

If the actual speed is 800, which is really slow

And what makes you think 800mhz is "really slow"? Just the fact that you've grown used to look at "1600", now it means that 800 is really slow, even though it's the exact same thing?

7 minutes ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

then why not just tell consumers it's 800 instead of talking about a "fake" speed?

2 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

3- Have you ever heard about marketing? You know that thing that makes companies rich? That's the reason for this "fake" RAM frequency and many other things that make consumers buy products.

It's not "fake" speed. It's "effective" speed, there's a difference. While I haven't been around into the PC thing for that long, I imagine this as being a legacy reason from the trasition times between RAM and DDRAM. I imagine that, in the beginning, DDR was slower in physical speed than regular RAM, though it was effectively faster and memmory, so that's how they (rightfully) decided to advertise it. And that's how it keeps up until today, to follow the stablished convention.

 

Again, I really don't believe it as trying to make it more confusing for the user, but rather the very opposite.

[_Grid21]

4 minutes ago, LionSpeck said:

1- You're running at 1600MHz because CPU-Z tells 800 (which again is half the advertised one).
2- DDR, DDR2, DDR3 and DDR4 have ALL the same concept of double data rate, so yes, an 800MHz DDR2 stick is running at a real speed of 400MHz.
3- Have you ever heard about marketing? You know that thing that makes companies rich? That's the reason for this "fake" RAM frequency and many other things that make consumers buy products.

Yeah marketing. But does that mean I actually have a slow system? Or slow ram since it's 800? And double would be what 800x2, or double, =1600? 

[Tusk2435]

1 minute ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

Yeah marketing. But does that mean I actually have a slow system? Or slow ram since it's 800? And double would be what 800x2, or double, =1600? 

You don't have a slow system, because 1600MHz is really common for RAM, from everyday use to gaming. For memory intensive tasks (such as 3D modelling, motion graphics, video FX and video editing) it's still fine, but in those scenarios, having faster RAM would make a noticeable difference. Those are pretty much the only reasons you should consider RAM OC, and by the way (if CPU, motherboard and RAM support it) there's XMP (Intel eXtreme Memory Profile) which simplifies memory OC by creating presets that are certified to work in normal conditions and that don't require you to have a headache around voltage, frequency, latencies. Still if you really want to OC.

[Tusk2435]

Oh, I forgot to say that yes, you have 1600MHz (advertised frequency) RAM, which means double 800 or 800x2. So you have 800MHz of real frequency.

[bgibbz]

Important thing to note is that ram speed is not advertised in mghz. It's usually neaseured in ddr speed. Ddr3-1600 has a ddr speed of 1600 but a clock speed of 800mghz. 

[typographie]

1 hour ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

Then why do we overclock ram if it's not even going to actually run at 1600Mhz?

It is effectively 1600 MHz. It's just that CPU-Z chooses to display your memory speed before the DDR multiplier is factored in. You just have to remember your memory's effective speed is double what is shown in CPU-Z.

[_Grid21]

1 hour ago, LionSpeck said:

You don't have a slow system, because 1600MHz is really common for RAM, from everyday use to gaming. For memory intensive tasks (such as 3D modelling, motion graphics, video FX and video editing) it's still fine, but in those scenarios, having faster RAM would make a noticeable difference. Those are pretty much the only reasons you should consider RAM OC, and by the way (if CPU, motherboard and RAM support it) there's XMP (Intel eXtreme Memory Profile) which simplifies memory OC by creating presets that are certified to work in normal conditions and that don't require you to have a headache around voltage, frequency, latencies. Still if you really want to OC.

 

That's actually how I am able to run 1600Mhz right now and my timing is 9-9-9-24. I am using the Corsair Vengeance LP XMP ram. 

47 minutes ago, typographie said:

It is effectively 1600 MHz. It's just that CPU-Z chooses to display your memory speed before the DDR multiplier is factored in. You just have to remember your memory's effective speed is double what is shown in CPU-Z.

 

Ok now is the multiplier the same as me saying 800x2=1600?

[Kishi]

The timing is the number of clock cycles that pass, if I'm remembering correctly.

[_Grid21]

3 hours ago, Kishi said:

The timing is the number of clock cycles that pass, if I'm remembering correctly.

Interesting. 

[Tusk2435]

15 hours ago, Josh_Grid21 said:

That's actually how I am able to run 1600Mhz right now and my timing is 9-9-9-24. I am using the Corsair Vengeance LP XMP ram. 

Ok now is the multiplier the same as me saying 800x2=1600?

The multiplier is the factor that needs to be multiplied to the base frequency (BCLK) to obtain 1600MHz, so it's an even different thing. But the frequency is in fact 800x2=1600. By the way, you can enable (and preview) the XMP profiles in the BIOS (if the motherboard supports it)

[_Grid21]

On 9/22/2016 at 8:12 AM, LionSpeck said:

The multiplier is the factor that needs to be multiplied to the base frequency (BCLK) to obtain 1600MHz, so it's an even different thing. But the frequency is in fact 800x2=1600. By the way, you can enable (and preview) the XMP profiles in the BIOS (if the motherboard supports it)

 

I actually have XMP mode enabled, I enabled it right off the bat when I first set up my computer.