I want to try to change my memory settings CAS L and things.

[Scottie]

I have Samsung 2x 256 MB PC3200 running in duaul channel Mode with a nForce 2 MB and would like to play around with the BOIS settings to give me better proformance but keeping it stable and safe.

The settings right now are set to here is a picture.




please help me and thank you.

[Scottie]

I read somewhere it's not wortht the small gain to change these so I will leave them alone, AM I right ?

[BrainStorm69]

Generally speaking, the performance increase will be pretty small, and probably not noticeable except in benchmarks. But if you want to mess with them, you can do it in the BIOS. Generally the worst it will do is cause your system to hang/crash. But if you get too agressive, your PC might not even boot up. In that case, there is proabably a keystroke combo you can do while starting to boot that will load safe values so you can get back into the BIOS to set them back (read your motherboard manual). Worst case, you will have to reset your clear CMOS jumperto go back to the standard BIOS values (again read your motherboard manual for the procedure).

[whomacuddy]

This depends on what your RAM Modules are capable of , the performance increase i usually quite small , and you current timings are fairly good for this type of DDR , making them more agressive will certainly increase the possiblity of system instability and you will need to test the settings throuroughly with an appropriate memory testing software to ensure they're OK I use MEMTEST86 which comes as an Bootable CD ISO image and a few runs of that tests the memory in absence of the OS

[Cobra]

CAS (Column Array Strobe) will yield the most performance gain, but as others have pointed out it is a very small one. You may find (as I did) that tweaking these will cause so much trouble that your machine will not even be able to get into BIOS. In this case, remove the battery and clear CMOS to get back to factory or safe settings.

Read the link in my signature for more information on memory timings and how they can be tweaked.

Personally, I'd say that you'd be best off overclocking your CPU using the FSB to get more performance out of your machine. Again, see my signature.

Cobra