Does this make sence on changing ram timings?

[terrybear]

So, I noticed 2 of my timings on my ram where higher then the ram specs in the bios ... SO ... logic would dictate I go in & change the 2 timings that are off .... But here's the weird thing about it ...

Since doing so .... my system seems to be slower in responce time insted of faster as it was with the higher settings ...... Anyone else think this is odd/not right ?

[sswilson]

I'm not a ram expert, but yes it's possible that lower settings might produce degraded performance.

Back in the day when I was trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of my S939 3700 I spent days and days trying to find the best possible secondary timings... I'd mostly run super-pi and use that as my benchmark, and when tightening a particular setting you'd get it down to a certain point where it gave the best performance and then if you lowered it any further it'd start to degrade.

I always assumed it was due to the settings relationship(s) with other settings and that (in layman's terms) a too-tight setting would make it miss it's "handshake" and therefore have to go around a full turn again to meet up. I'm sure that's not really how it works, but it's how I always worked my brain around the apparent paradox of lower settings providing poorer performance.