RAM Brand comparison - which is better

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by mgookin, Jun 29, 2011.

  1. Anyone have feelings either way with respect to Patriot or G.Skill?

    Been an OCZ person myself but Newegg does not have my flavor this morning.

    Feedback appreciated.
     
  2. Never had a problem with Patriot. Its also on most motherboard approved lists. G. Skill? Sent some back over the years.
     
  3. orionn

    orionn

    I personally have used Crucial (division of Micron Technology) for years without problems (after bad experiences with no-brand RAM and learning about memtest86).
     
  4. mushkin, corsair, kingston,samsung, crucial, gskill, patriot, in that order, according to price. low profile heat sink or none at all. pny too, used a ton of it over the years.

    imo, ram is ram. except ocz, that's junk.:eek: :)
     
  5. I use Patriot for my self-builts. 2 boxes. No problem so far (>1.5 year).
     
  6. Some say the brand makes a difference. I have not seen that. Only had 1 stick fail over the years, a Corsair.

    I've usually bought that which was bargain or with rebate... have even mixed brands to no ill effect.
     
  7. So now my system looks like this:


    RAM Slot 1 and 2:
    old 1 GB DDR2 Kingmax 800 MHz RAMs with timings:
    3-3-3-9-12 200 MHz
    4-4-4-12-16 266 MHz
    5-5-5-18-23 400 MHz

    RAM Slot 3 and 4
    new 1 GB DDR2 Kingmax 800 MHz RAMs which unfortunately have different timings:
    4-4-4-12-16 266 MHz
    5-5-5-15-20 333 MHz !!!
    6-6-6-18-24 400 MHz


    When I let the BIOS select the timings automatically, it choosed 5-5-5-15 and 334 MHz (CPU-z).


    I wanted to get back the 400 MHz, which I had, when I had 2 GB of RAM
    so in BIOS, below 1st information: 5-5-5-15-3-44-5-3 I set


    DRAM Frequency to 800 MHz and timings
    CAS# Latency
    DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay
    DRAM RAS# Precharge
    DRAM RAS# Activate to Precharge
    to 5-5-5-15 manually but there is no field for the 5th value, there is only a
    RAS# to RAS# Delay field with values from 5 to 15 which would not be proper. So I left it Auto.


    (There are these fields also, which I left Auto:
    DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A1
    DRAM CLK Skew on Channel A2
    DRAM CLK Skew on Channel B1
    DRAM CLK Skew on Channel B2


    2nd Information: 8-3-5-4-6-4-7
    Read to Write Delay (S/D)
    Write to Read Delay (S)
    Write to Read Delay (D)
    Read to Read Delay (S)
    Read to Read Delay (D)
    Write to Write Delay (S)
    Write to Write Delay (D)


    3rd Information: 13-5-1-6-6
    Write to PRE Delay
    Read to PRE Delay
    PRE to PRE Delay
    All PRE to ACT Delay
    All PRE to REF Delay)


    So now my problem is that when I look into CPU-z, it shows:
    DDR2 4096 MBytes
    Dual Channel Symmetric DC Mode
    DRAM Frequency 400,9 MHz
    FSB: DRAM 2:3
    Command Rate (CR) 2T
    5-5-5-15 (CL, tRCD, tRP, tRAS) but
    the 5th value (Row Refresh Cycle Time - tRFC) is 44 clocks.

    should I set DRAM Frequency to 800 MHz and 5-5-5-15 or 5-5-5-18 for timings or rather 6-6-6-18 because the previous timings are too high for my new RAMs? :confused:
     
  8. Never had an issue with Kingston
    Crucial is also a good brand.

    I've had a lot of defective patriot memory lately.
     
  9. this.
     
  10. orionn

    orionn

    #10     Jun 30, 2011