XXHighEnd

Since using HQPlayer Ram had been underclocked from 2133MHz to 800MHz after reading about it reducing noise, at the time it was a definite improvement, more natural, smooth etc. no noticeable effect on loading time or PC performance

Today I reverted to 2133MHz to reevaulate with XXHE since it goes so in depth with memory settings.
Now it seems both are viable options, side to side comparison is a bit slow to tell which is best (sticking with 2133MHz for now)

Is there any recommendation or preferences for this?

nah , lower frequency is a lot less resolving, it does give a  pleasant sound unlike an underclocked CPU but not worth it at all.

Are you sure? Not something I've tried with Ram only my PC. You can put your system specs in your signature so we can see what you are running PC wise.
I've been under clocking PC for a long period and definitely have a better sound. In fact a recent Bios upgrade had restored original settings. After underclocking and switching unwanted services off in Bios, sound was restored to an even better level.
If you check most XXhighend users signatures you will see most are doing the same.
It does take some courage and experience to experiment with Bios settings. Here is a link to early Bios settings Peter did with his XxPC: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2882.0

Robert

Robert,

I'm familiar with underclocking the CPU, but have never tried underclocking RAM.  My guess is most people here have not tried underclocking RAM.  I might be wrong though.

Ramesh

Have to say I havn't tried underclocking Ram.

I always thought one needed Ram to run at full speed to get the best result. The main reason for using Ram was speed.

Something I may try, as it is I'm seriously under powered compared to XXhighend PC's.

Anyway I'm often well behind the program in computer tweaks.

Robert

Hi Ramesh - I agree with the latter (or else we don't talk abut it much) but do notice that the Mach III PC you use is 2400MHz capable (the MoBo / CPU itself even more) while it runs at 1866Mhz.
So you do have some experience with it. :)

I set it like that for everyone (also myself) just because it seems a good idea. The better idea could be to set it at 2400 and see whether you perceive a difference.

Side info for others : these PC's are a rarity with 6 channels of memory and therefore also contain 6 memory DIMMs. The difference when set faster or slower should be relatively high (for current usage).

Also, this is not about changing voltages explicitly. Only clock speed.

Regards,
Peter

it sounds like CPU underclocking is worth another shot then, the PC might have been using integrated graphics at the time which could explain the degraded SQ. as you say it might need experimentation, i think I just set to the lowest possible freq.

A slight RAM underclock like Peter mentions might be best, striking a balance

Notice that all could be relative. Many of of run the CPU at 700MHz and less. So in case you did not see that - just saying.  :innocent:

Peter

CPU underclock had more clear benefits than RAM underclock, these benefits were easier to appreciate when other areas of the PC were improved but with lower speeds the sound gets softer in a way I dont like, I think there is an overlap of benefits and negatives, smoother, more natural but lower clock speed reduces energy or ...speed
of the music.

After some more tweaking I think voltage plays a very big part in how the CPU affects sound.
With simple underclocking there must be some undervolting happening too, with minimum 800MHz CPU underclock and ''auto'' setting for core voltage in BIOS, the core voltage reduces to around 0.9V from 1.1V @ 3.5GHz. Only with a fixed core voltage can you hear the actual effect of clock speed on sound.
With manual control it can be set much lower to 0.7V at a maximum 1600MHz, which sounds more vibrant and at least as smooth as 0.9V at 800MHz. I have yet to compare 800MHz vs 1600MHz at a fixed voltage or the minimum core voltage 0.6V.

The RAM voltage also has a big influence on sound but its very sensitive and not as clear cut, for some reason only slightly overvolting sounded like an improvement, a 50-100mV increase to default 1.2V.

I hope this general PC testing is ok to post here, if someone will even find it useful (other MoBo manufacturers BIOS may do things differently to Asus).

Its a great idea its an area that needs more work. When I updated Bios last year, it put all settings back to default.

Took me a month to realise. This time I went further and it did make a bigger difference. But I've wondered if I did lose something with lower clock speed as you suggest.

I havn't played with voltages. Online there's heaps on overclocking using voltages for gaming but nothing with regards to music. Keep the good work up.

Robert

Do you mean with CPU underclocking or Ram?

I've tried underclocking Ram and felt it wasn't as good soundwise. This was with the CPU already underclocked. I currently run Ram per default speed.

I've been playing with Xxhighend settings lately so haven't tried Bios settings. I try not to play with too many sound balls in the air so to speak!!!!
Robert

CPU. there was a similar effect with RAM underclock only worse, which you also noticed... I wonder where the benefits of higher RAM speeds end, if we should be using the fastest RAM we can get our hands on.

There might be something to undervolting or overvolting RAM, since the last post ive switched to 100mV undervolt instead and this sounds interesting too ... it takes a while to figure out if these small differences are improvements or not, or if a more musical/lush/vibrant sound isnt adding some form of distortion.

If its available to you another setting with some potential could be ''PCH Core'' voltage, which apparently feeds the chipset which handles all the USB, SATA, PCIe communications. It was possible to drop it from 1.0V to its minimum 0.8V, all is stable and AFAICT sound quality has improved slightly.

Thanks for the support on this

This is more complicated once you see the relation with XTweaks in XXHighEnd. I guess you do, but just saying ...

Peter

xtweaks is worth mentioning.
Based on the descriptions 'nervous rate', 'provide stable power', 'utilize cores' sound like they should behave the same with CPU clock and voltage changes so I ignored them. There are options for C-states, speedstep and Turbo Boost in BIOS which are disabled, from the descriptions they sound like they could be the equivalent to Utilize core and stable power settings.
 
Balanced load is confusing, based on listening a while ago the low balanced load settings gave better results with default CPU settings. From its description you could assume the lower BL setting would be bad  with heavy underclock/volt, when the CPU peak state is already slow/cold, yet the BL low settings give similarly good results... im not sure I understand BL but some consistency is good, less need to worry about BL interfering the effect of the BIOS tweaks

just want to add something that might be very important for some.
BIOS settings got wiped today after a hardware change, after changing back all the settings and booting up the sound was not good at all. rebooted into BIOS and there was one setting I didnt disable: CPU SVID support

Disabling SVID sounded better with default CPU setting when testing it way back but according to some post in an overclocking forum SVID  should be disabled specifically when you're using manual core voltage,
its not overriding the settings at least (BIOS still shows the core voltage I set when SVID was enabled) but it critical for good sound.

:)

This is probably obvious to most but RAM latency can be adjusted very easily, just like clock speed.


When underclocking, if RAM timing is set to auto latency will be lowered automatically depending on how low the clock speed is set, this could account for some of sound difference with underclocking, which itself might make things worse.

The latency is adjusted to very safe calculated values that corresponds to the decrease in speed, with manual setting I was able to siginificantly timing settings at max 2133MHz speed. e.g CAS went from 14 to 5 and somehow works with CPUz reporting it, others were also lowered to a similar degree.

Laurence, maybe not. Or generally not, I estimate.


I suppose the question is odd, but what would happen if we'd force the automatically applied (right ?) 5 again to 14 or anything else "too high" ? Can that technically be done ?

Thanks,
Peter

It allows it to go higher but how high before something goes wrong im not sure. Usually its needed for stability when overclocking.

RAM speed is supposed to be an equal factor in the ''true latency'' of RAM, so you could do it the opposite way with overclocking - maybe thats better, but very high speeds are only supported with recent hardware. (my mobo and CPU are limited to 2133MHz)