Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Storage > External Storage > In Search of True DDR2 Bleeding Edge Memory

BIOS Settings To Boost Performance

03:00 - Monday 27 February 2006 by Tom's Guide Team

There are four primary ways to speed memory access and to thus to improve performance:

The BIOS offers a range of memory speed settings from which users may choose.

Memory speed settings are independent in most BIOS', and may be set directly or by setting values for underlying speed factors (FSB x multiplier = memory speed).

An overview of BIOS memory speed settings:

Possible Memory Configurations
FSB1066 (266 MHz)	Multiplier	FSB800 (200 MHz)
DDR2-400	1.50	n/a
DDR2-533	2.00	DDR2-400
DDR2-667	2.50	n/a
DDR2-711	2.66	DDR2-533
DDR2-800	3.00	DDR2-600
DDR2-888	3.33	DDR2-667
DDR2-1066	4.00	DDR2-800

It's also possible to adjust front side bus speed.

It is no secret that a higher FSB clock rate is the most important setting when overclocking RAM on Intel-based systems, so that data gets delivered more quickly to the CPU.

Tightening memory timings also has a positive impact on memory speed, but can quickly lead to system instability. Such changes are best made in small, experimental steps.

The most important timing setting is the CAS latency value because all other values are based on this setting, and have noticeably less influence on performance.