Memory speed issues. 4GB 667MHz DDR2 ram gets a windows score of 5.0

Factual Questions
1

Hi.

Is 5.0 an expected score for this type and speed of ram?

If not then there’s something wrong. I get 5.9 (max) for everything else. A friend at work who’s into building PCs suggested I manually set the speed at 667 in the bios (as they can sometimes default to the lowest)

I tried that and it had no effect. But the bios mentioned something about the speed being dependent on the FSB frequency and something else about the FSB.

Both of those were auto so I figured if I set the memory to 667 they would configure themselves appropriately (as the bios seems to imply that)

Is there anything else I can do in the bios to speed up the memory? Anything else bios wise to speed anything else up?

The specs of the whole system are as follows…

ACER LCD MONITOR 22" WIDE X221WA SIL/BLK

ASUS 768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ULTRA 2xDVI PCI-E SLI
GEIL 4GB DDR2 667 CL5.0 DUAL CHANNEL BLACK DRAGON RET
ASUS SKT-775 P5K PREMIUM/WIFI S/L 1333FSB
CREATIVE X-FI XTREME GAMER 7.1
ThermalTake W0131RE 850W TOUGHPOWER CABLE MANAGEMENT RET
INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 1066FSB SKT775 RET
ThermalTake CASE SHARK VA7000BWA BLK
LOGITECH ULTRA X PREM KEYBOARD SIL/BLK USB
LOGITECH RX250 OPTICAL MOUSE USB/PS2 BLK
MS WINDOWS VISTA ULTIMATE 64-BIT
Speeze QuadroFlow VIII - Low Noise
Internal Card Reader 50-in-1
ASUS Wireless LAN 54Mbps PCI
10 X USB 2.0 PORTS
SAMSUNG DVD /-RW 20x6x20x8 D/LAYER BLACK LIGHTSCRIBE (SATA)
500 GB SATA HDD UDMA 300 7200 16MB

(there are two 500gb drives. I have configured as raid0)

2

I think 5.0 might be the high score for memory; I’ve never seen anything higher for that subcomponent. 667 memory was available at Vista ship time, and generally whatever was the best out then gets a “5”.

Of course, if you’re even asking this question, it means you’re running Vista and are taking the perfomance hit from that. Going back to XP is likely to make far more difference than any tweak of the memory speed.

3

I believe going back to XP means going back to DX9?

I’m giving Vista a chance. And if I ever particularly need speed and decided to get XP I’ll dual boot. I do have a terrabyte to work with! (well, nine hundred and something MB but you know what I mean)

But with regards to the memory issue I’m mainly trying to make use of what I’ve got. If I’ve got fast RAM and my system isn’t using it properly then that needs to be addressed.

I’ve seen people get scores of 5.9 for their memory.

4

DX10 is not an upgrade. I’m not sure what Microsoft did, but many games that run great with DX9, run very poorly with DX10.

5

I have 4GB of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 on my ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe and just verified that my memory score is 5.9, so it certainly is possible.

I’d expect DDR2 677 to score higher than 5.0, but looking at some forums where people post their rig and Windows Experience Index scores kinda makes me wonder how they calculate the WEI, because sometimes similar rigs have scores that vary significantly.

There are a bunch of terribly mysterious memory settings in the BIOS (I consider my self technically adept, but the sheer number of settings is mind-boggling.) The settings for my memory were not detected COMPLETELY correctly and I had to manually change a few things with guidance from the gurus in the Crucial forums. If you think your performance isn’t where it should be, I’m sure Geil has forums where you can see recommended settings and verify them against the settings in your BIOS.