SPD Question

[Frank (33)]

On an Abit BF6 (or in general), do memory settings in the system bios (CAS2 or 3, etc) override what's programmed on a dimm's SPD chip? How about if the SPD chip is gone altogether?

I got a good deal on two Infineon 256MB PC133 CL3 SDRAMs, which has no problems running at CL2 at 133MHz. One of the dimms gave a "Warning - SPD not found" error during boot. On closer inspection I discovered the SPD chip was skewed upwards (probably due to improper insertion) and when I tried to realign it, it popped off. The dimm works perfectly otherwise and I'm wondering if it's still running at system bios settings (CL2) or will the system bios revert it to conservative defaults (CL3)?

Will SiSandra, Aida32 etc tell me whether the memory is running at CL2 or CL3?

Thanks a lot,
Frank

 

[Jens C. Hansen [Odense]]

Frank wrote:

On an Abit BF6 (or in general), do memory settings in the system bios (CAS2 or 3, etc) override what's programmed on a dimm's SPD chip?

Yes.

How about if the SPD chip is gone altogether?

In bios, the setting can be 2, 3 and "by SPD".
(although in some bios'es it is called "Auto").
The last setting will choose CL3 if there is no SPD.

I got a good deal on two Infineon 256MB PC133 CL3 SDRAMs, which has no problems running at CL2 at 133MHz. One of the dimms gave a "Warning - SPD not found" error during boot. On closer inspection I discovered the SPD chip was skewed upwards (probably due to improper insertion) and when I tried to realign it, it popped off. The dimm works perfectly otherwise and I'm wondering if it's still running at system bios settings (CL2) or will the system bios revert it to conservative defaults (CL3)?

If the bios is set to CL2, then it will stay that way.

However, if the RAM is sold as CL3, I would test it thoroughly with memtest86, as running CL3 RAM at CL2 can cause data corruption.

 

[Frank (33)]

"Jens C. Hansen [Odense]" wrote:

Frank wrote:
On an Abit BF6 (or in general), do memory settings in the system bios (CAS2 or 3, etc) override what's programmed on a dimm's SPD chip?

Yes.

How about if the SPD chip is gone altogether?

In bios, the setting can be 2, 3 and "by SPD".
(although in some bios'es it is called "Auto").
The last setting will choose CL3 if there is no SPD.

...

Thanks Jens. It's good quality memory (HYB39S128800CT-7.5 chips) and reviews claim the dimms should run fine at 133MHz CL2. Still, I will run memtest86.

Frank