System setup suggestions

[Sparhawk]

Hey guys,

In need of a little help.. Here's what I have:

Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 Rev 1.1 F9
CPU: AMD FX 8320 3.5GHz

I've got two stacks of RAM..

First Stack 16GB: F3-14900CL9Q-16GBXL
Second Stack 32GB: F3-10666CL9Q-32GBXL

Haven't really had a chance to do any stabilization testing with the first stack, but at boot the mobo is reporting the RAM as DDR1600 instead of 1866..

With the second stack the system recognizes different amounts of memory randomly at boot up.. 32GB/24GB, etc.. and in Windows it will display 32GB or 24GB(16.0GB usable)..

Which stack would be better for overall performance and are there manual settings that could be tweaked in the bios to straighten out the problems?

THANKS!

[Tradesman]

You have the latest BIOS which is good, so I'd suggest the following:

On the 1866 sticks, the 8320 is rated UP TO 1866 AT 1 STICK PER CHANNEL, or two sticks total, to try and run all four, suggest you , install and enable DOCP if your mobo has it (I think it does) and select the 1866 profile...if no joy, try adding 0.08 to the CPU/NB voltage...still nothing add 0.06 to the DRAM voltage....still no joy post up your BIOS setting for system voltages and settings along with the DRAM info (all timings)

With the 32GB set, sounds like maybe a stick isn't fully seated (the fluctuations of total DRAM) and with that set you'll prob need an increase of at least 0.10 on the CPU/NB - the 16GB usable may be a limitation of the Win version (need Pro, Ultimate or Enterprise) to run more than 16GB

For most the 1866 set would be better overall, but really depends on what all you do, for some folks more DRAM will aid performance more than a higher freq i.e. if you run a big RAM Drive, run multiple VMs, do alot of RAM intensive work with programs, work with really large data sets, etc