ECS A770M-A mobo and F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500)

[Hansdorr]

Ok, So I'm new. Not a total noob. I've read enough on here to know that not all AMD mobos will recognize PC2 8500 (1066) RAM. I have the same issue. What I would like to know is if anyone has gotten this memory to run at 1066 on the ECS A770M-A motherboard, and if so what did you do to get it to run at that speed. Mine dumbed down to 800.
I also know this board is a piece of k-rap but I got it cheap with a quad-core 9500. I think ECS is messing with us because they even printed "Dual DDR2 1066" right next to the memory slots Any insight you can offer will be greatly appreciated.
And just another quick thought, how much performance difference is there really between 1066 and 800?

All the Best!
Hans

[Tradesman]

Couldn't find anything on the ECS site for this mobo, but a review of the board at overclockersclub.com and the specs listed at NewEgg show it as being for 800 DRAM, no telling where the 1066 on the board came from, it may be something they planned for but didn't accomplish (Have run into a couple of their boards that didn't live up to their advertising).

You could try manually settings the timings, CR to 2 (T or N) and raise the DRAM, NB and vCore voltages, as in normally OCing, but not sure if you could hit 1066 - maybe 1000 or 900. You could also run at 800 and probably tighten the timings down to 4-4-4-12 at stock voltage

[GSKILL TECH]

Run it at DDR2-800 4-4-4-12 2.0V, this will be just as fast or faster than DDR2-1066 CL5 without the voltage hassle. You can also try overclocking to DDR2-900 with those timings and it would be even faster.

Thank you
GSKILL TECH

[Hansdorr]

I want to thank you guys for your good advice. As I mentioned in my post, my mobo is an admitted piece of k-rap. I went into the bios and the only timing I can change is the CAS so I dropped it to 4, the rest of the timings are still at 5-5-15. It runs ok, probably due to the 4GB jump from 4GB to 8GB. I wanted to ask another question. Are there any software utilities that would allow me to change the timing since the board won't let me and if there are, do they work? I'm probably just going to have to leave things as is but not being able to "get it right" drives me nuts! :>)

Thanks again for all of your good help!
Cheers! Hans

[Tradesman]

Could try memset, there's also spdtool that let's you reset the SPD on the DRAM - but can also make the sticks unusable if you don't know what you are doing

[JG07]

Set the memory clock mode to manual,
then set the clock value to 533 Mhz.
This will cause the memory to run in 1066 mode.
(provided your processor supports it)