800 MHz DDR2 RAM shows half of memory speed on my machine

I have an Acer Veriton l670 mini PM. My machine has:

• E8400 3 GHz dual core CPU
• 2x2, 4 GB DDR2 800 MHz RAM dual channel (Kingston acr256x64d2s800c6)
• 320 GB hard disk 7200 rpm

While this is not a very bad PC, I can't play Civilization V with the lowest options (it lags in game). I decided to check my PC with CPU-Z software. I am confused that it shows my memory running at half speed. Is there any jumper to change the speed?

Solution 1:

The "DDR" in DDR2 stands for Double Data Rate. It means that data is transferred twice on each clock cycle. Your RAM expects a clock speed of 400 MHz and is listed as 800 MHz because the double data rate means that it transfers data 800 million times per second.

This terminology is used for all DDR RAM and does not indicate a problem. See the DDR SDRAM article on Wikipedia for more information.

Your problem running Civilization V is likely to be the graphic processor. Your PC is not designed for gaming and uses Intel GMA4500 graphics integrated on the motherboard. The minimum graphics capability for Civilization V is "VIDEO CARD: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics".

If you want to use this PC for gaming, you should look at adding a dedicated graphics card. Unfortunately your PC's only expansion slot is a PCI Express x1 slot. That won't support most modern graphics cards, but if you search on "PCIe x1 graphics" should can find some older x1 cards for sale. They won't run the latest games, but can probably handle Civilization V.