Solved! Memory Cunundrum

[blueskyatfero]

Hello,
I have a toshiba satellite p305d-s8900.I recently bout and intalled a new HDD and installed windows 7 on it. I also downloaded AMD overdrive as so far as I can tell my BIOS comes with no default ways of tweaking settings. when I was lookin at my specs I saw I was running ram witha fsb of 400 mghz. prefacing this I recently leerned I loved video games and would like better performance from the machine I have as aposed to buying a new one or PS3. So I went out and bought some kingston ram t 667 mhz. my sytem truly seemed to play games better and be speed up nut then I realized that the ram is infact running at 333 mghz and that the ram I was using has better thoretical specs? The ram I had is DDR2 PC 6400 SDRAM, The RAM I bought is PC2 my winows index score wentdown but I truly feel my gaming and overall performance has gone way up especially the frame rate in my games which was god awful?? is it just my mind playing tricks on me??

 

[buwish]

With DDR2, you take the numbers you are getting, i.e. 400mhz times 2 and that gives you the 800mhz that it is rated at. The same goes for the 667mhz stuff, etc... Don't worry, it is running at 800mhz.

 

[outlw6669]

Welcome to the forums!

It really depends, did you install a larger amount of the slower RAM or the same amount?
If your system was short on RAM, having more available at any speed will make it run faster.
If you only changed the RAM with out adding any more, it probably was the placebo effect

TBH, the speed of the RAM has little/no impact on overall system performance.
As long as there is enough available it will perform nearly identical at all speeds under standard usage.

A quick explanation for you.
The RAM you are using is DDR (Double Data Rate).
This means it transfers data twice per clock cycle, effectively doubling it's speed.
While its base clock is running at 400Mhz or 333Mhz, its effective speed is twice this at 800Mhz or 667Mhz.

 

[outlw6669]

He saw it listed as 400Mhz in AMD's Overdrive software and assumed that DDR2 667 was faster.
A rookie mistake but understandable.

^
^That is it exactly

 

[blueskyatfero]

I made the rookie mistake like outlw6669 said . I had 4 gigs to start with and I replaced it with 4 gigs. I guess why I am so confused is my system seems to perform better, I have tried taking the new ram out and putting the original back in and trying all my games, it is like they are running in slow mo. then I put the new ram in and they run much better, which is why I am confused now. This model came with a defective HDD and has givin me a lot of grief is it possible the RAM was defective from the start as well

 

[outlw6669]

That is a possibility and the only reason I could think of why your system would run slower with it installed.
I would recommend checking the RAM with Memtest.

 

[blueskyatfero]

Or maybe I just need to come to terms with the limitations of my machine... I don't know. My friend has a ASUS with similar specs but it's a Intel, and it runs all the same games perfectly. So I guess thats why this vees me so much. I only need my computer to watch movie, run matlab so I can write programs for school, surf the net, and play games. It does everything but the games so I guess I should be happy and just fork out the cash for a ps3or BO or something lol