Happy as a loon!

[Outer Marker]

OK, so are overclockers ever happy? well I consider myself both. I'm running an E8400 E0 on a EP45-UD3R with GSkill 1066 memory. I am rock stable at stock voltages at 3.6 GHz.

FSB = 401, multiplier = 9. Memory timings are 5-5-5-15-2T. I'm currently on the 400 MCH strap (2.66D) for a memory speed of 1069.

My question is: what's my ratio? I see everybody talking about 1:1 being the best thing since sliced bread. I don't even think 1:1 is even possible for me is it? Does CPU-Z show my ratio?

Should I try running a 333 MCH strap (2.40B) and push the CPU higher at the expense of underclocking my RAM?

[Nickel020]

Re: Happy as a loon!

There are unfotunately numerous ways to describe the realtionship between RAM and CPU speed. Gigabyte uses the memory multiplier (yours is 2.66, 2.0 would be 1:1).
To "convert" the ratio to the multiplier "way" of describing this take the inverse and multiply by 2. So if you open the "memory" tab in CPU-Z it will show your ratio as 3:4 (inverse = 4:3 = 4/3; x2 = 8/3 =2.66)
The other way around is not that necessary since CPU-Z shows that nicely in the "memory" tab.
The reason why the ratio is usually used is because you can talk to someone who has a mainboard from another manufacturer and he will still know what you're talking about.

The reason why people recommend 1:1 is because there's no benefit to running memory higher than FSB. At 1:1 bandwidth of the FSB and dual channel memory bandwidth are equal. Therefore there's little use in getting the data fast to the FSB (memory frequency basically describes how fast data gets from memory to the FSB) but then doesn't get passed on faster to the CPU since the FSB's bandwidth is lower than the bandwidth of the memory.

Don't worry about it though, you won't notice a difference really no matter what speed you run the memory at.