TeamGroup Cronus Micron - Part TWO!
(sorry if pictures take a bit to load at times. my host seems to be having some slight difficulties)
Ok, to make a long story short, Ben (from TankGuys) and I were talking, and decided that one way or another, something needed to be done about the number of people having trouble with these Micron sticks... Nothing better than a little bit of "normal" testing, is there? That said, a HUGE Thank You goes out to Ben @ the crew at TankGuys for helping me get this done. I hope this thread will make a good supplement to OPB's "real truth" thread, and helps add some additional insight to those of you with picky Micron sticks :toast:
So, I present to you a random kit. My last thread showed what micron 5b F is capable of, and this is more "what to expect" if you get a retail kit ;)
http://eclipseoc.com/phpwcms_filestorage/1/1_223.jpg
Note the date code, 0609M. Apparently, this doesn't matter, as we have word directly from OPB that ALL Team's chips are week 0538 ;)
Also, I'd like to point out the voltage rating. I forget when this was asked for, but it definitly didn't take long for them to show up on retail sticks. Though I'm gonna have to ask: Does going over rated voltage void warranty? (I'm assuming not)
NOW! Let's get into testing, shall we? I'm going to focus on clocks for now, performance can come later when I have something to compare it to. Don't ask for 3d benches though, as I'm running on a measly Geforce4MX-440 :p:
EDIT:
The board I'm using is a DFI NF4 Ultra-D, R.AD0, bios 11-14 :D
First off, used optimal settings from my first set (including drive @ level 5 and data drive @ level 1 are used until otherwise noted) and set the stock primary timings & mhz. Headed off into memtest at 2.6v. Came out a few minutes later, unscathed :lol2:
Being the impatient guy I am, I opted out of running 32m at stock mhz, immediately went for....
255mhz @ 3-3-3-8, 2.6v
Take note of the SPD. What's shown in there WILL NOT effect the clocks, assuming that you're NOT overclocking with "auto" settings ;)
but 255mhz is pretty lame, isn't it? Let's see how far I can get without having to mess with too much.
260mhz @ 3-3-3-8, 2.6v
Getting to 265mhz required a little bit of tweaking. Slightly dissapointing, but oh well. Take note, I had to loosen the secondary timings to get 265mhz done without changing the voltage
265mhz @ 3-3-3-8, 2.6v
Took a bit of work to get to 270mhz stable, but I was getting bored with 5mhz increments at this point, so I went for the max speed with a simple voltage bump and lower tras :lol2:
273.2mhz @ 3-3-3-6, 2.8v
Though, after messing around with 4x1gb, I came across something odd. I had to loosen timings when at 2.6v to get more mhz. Now, I had bumped up voltage a bit to get higher mhz, but as I was fine tuning the settings to get the most mhz, I noticed something strange....
Tighter timings were behaving better than looser :wth: I also took the time to find the optimal drive strengths. To my surprise, it ended up being at dram drive = Level 8 & data drive = Level 3 :confused:
276.3mhz @ 3-3-3-0, 2.8v
(Ignore the change in SPD, I was doing some preliminary testing with 4x1gb before running this bench. DFI boards require that all SPD's are the same for all the sticks to be used; I quickly flashed the SPD of the new sticks to that of the old ones NOTE: I WOULD NOT ADVISE MESSING WITH THE SPD IF YOU DON'T HAVE A VERY GOOD REASON, AS IT IS QUITE RISKY)
I thought that was a pretty good setting, so I ran prime95 Blend as I went to get some lunch :D Stopped it after about 50 min, with no errors. While not rediculously stable, I've found that about 15 min of prime95 is all Micron based sticks need for 3d stability in my rig.
Trying to push further forward, I was met with some erratic results. I'm sure some of you guys have seen things like this before. Makes me go :banana:'s
22 loops? :wth:
22 loops again, but not enough! :stick:
So, I figured I've pushed the loose timings to high enough levels for now. I went back into the bios and set the HTT back to 200mhz and went for the tightest timings. Almost got 2-3-2 error free in memtest, though it took 3.0v, which I wasn't feeling very happy about. Rather than giving the sticks more abuse than they deserve, I raised to cas2.5:
210mhz @ 2.5-3-2-0, 2.8v
They scale pretty well with voltage at tighter timings, I'm guessing ~215mhz is possible with 3v, but again, unneeded abuse.
Next up was 2.5-3-3. I was honestly expecting around 240mhz here. No such luck
222.5mhz @ 2.5-3-3-0, 2.9v
Though one set is hardly indicative of what 5b F will do at lower mhz (I honestly don't recall ever seeing anyone else try settings below 250mhz :slapass: ), it looks like keeping the timings loose and pushing the mhz is where it's at for these IC's.
4x1gb Testing:
4x1gb has been quite an interesting experience thus far. I was initially having a lot of trouble staying stable in windows.
First, I couldn't even get into windows XP 64 with the memory hole enabled in the bios to show all 4gb in the POST. the 32bit version of XP (SP2) worked just fine, but only showed 3.2gb. that wasn't satisfactory :fact:
So, after doing some poking about, I came across a switch that appeared to do something that should fix the problems i was having, /NOLOWMEM (moved all the pci devices to >4gb). Worked perfectly, and I was able to get into XP-64 without a problem...
BUT! as stability testing ensued, things would happen like I would be almost done with a 32m run and the computer would lock up. I figured that I was over the limit of my memory controller. I was trying to boot at 270mhz, at 2T command rate. When I backed the speed down some.. 250mhz failed to get past POST, 260mhz would sometimes lock up when booting into windows. Needless to say, I was very confused. On a whim, after trying a ton of settings, I set the HTT to 275mhz, and went into windows.. no problems at all :confused:
So, first off, just for kicks, 284.57mhz CPU-Z validated - http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc?id=83655
After rebooting, I opened up 4 instances of windows memtest, set each to 875mb to use up most of the free ram, and let it run for about an hour. Still sitting at those settings, so I'd say it's pretty stable.
275.1mhz @ 3-3-3-0, 2.8v (2T)
Quick testing puts the max prime95 stable at 276.3mhz again (I can produce a screen if someone so desires), which I find most curious. NO mhz loss, or gain, even though I'm running at 2T, and incurring a huge load on the mobo and memory controller with 4 sticks...
