1866 sniper ram hell

[reknyard]

OK i have the following items and all I want to do is get stable timings and bios setting to get it to run at its printed speed. In advance I am hoping for easy instructions for which bios settings to set. I wouldn't mind overclocking the CPU a bit as well. I only seem to run stable if I put everything on auto and let it clock down the ram to 1600. I want the best performance and speed out of this stuff. Well here is my stuff. Thanks in advance.

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3A v1.0 BIOS F5
AMD FX-8120 (AIRCOOLED)
G. Skill Sniper DDR3 1866 Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR
HIS Radeon 6870 1GB

[Tradesman]

Have you tried the latest beta BIOS F6E which straightens out some of the F5 BIOS problems?

Can be found here

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...?pid=3894#bios

[reknyard]

If you think it might help I will try it. Any info on settings for the BIOS?

[Maxxarcade]

I have the exact same rig, only with the FX-8150 and a Gigabyte 6870. Same problem for me too.

I will try the F6e BIOS and some other tweaks and report back with the results.

[Maxxarcade]

I think this memory just doesn't agree with the system. I tried raising the RAM voltage to 1.56 and the NB to 1.15, and most of the time the system will get stuck in a loop with "begin to update backup BIOS to latest version".

I ended up just running it at 1600, but there is a performance hit of nearly 1GB/sec (from what Memtest86+ says) from 1866. I was under the impression that the FX-8150 would natively support 1866, but the default speed is actually 1333?

[reknyard]

So is there any 1866 ram that is stable with this board? The FX series is suppose to support 1866 ram. This is a real bummer that this ram does not run with the board at its posted speed. Is there any stable clockings for it to run at 1600? All I want is the system to be stable. If its with 1600 fine but i would like it to be with 1866. Thanks Maxxarcade for posting.

[Maxxarcade]

I don't think it's an issue with the board. I might keep trying later this weekend and see if I can get it stable. I wish I had some other RAM to test though.

The real world performance hit from running at 1600 is probably very small, but like you, I want it to run at it's rated speed. If I wanted 1600, I would have bought 1600.

I'm starting to wonder why modern memory has to be manually configured to run at full speed, if it is truly rated for it. Seems like it would be programmed into the SPD, and the board would just pick it up. But pretty much every system I've built since the DDR2/DDR3 era has needed manual settings, and half of the time they don't go as high as advertised. But Ironically I had some G.Skill DDR2 800 that ran at 1066 without too much trouble.

[Maxxarcade]

I'm such a dork. My RAM was running in single channel mode because I had them in the wrong slots. Now all I had to do was enable the EOCP to "Profile 1" and everything worked on its own. Voltages are on auto.

I haven't done much stability testing, but it seems to be working fine so far. Memtest is now reporting 8.8GB/sec instead of 6.5.

When I was looking around in the AMD Overdrive utility, that's when I noticed it said single channel. So it was like that even when I had my old CPU.

[Tradesman]

Found this that may help with the Dozers and OCing (as well as running DRAM at 1866) via different methods

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte...ts-coming.html

[Maxxarcade]

Found this that may help with the DOzers and OCing (as well as running DRAM at 1866) via different methods

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte...ts-coming.html

Awesome, since that's pretty much the same hardware, this should be a good read!

[Tradesman]

Hope it helps, I did a build with an 8150 and wasn't really happy with the CPU overall, so have been staying away from them, despite being rated for 1866 seems like after 8GB or over 1866 people have too many problems with heat and just getting them set up, + can get the 2500K for less than the 8150 and it outperforms the Dozer, but that was one of the better reads I've come across to provide options

[Maxxarcade]

Hope it helps, I did a build with an 8150 and wasn't really happy with the CPU overall, so have been staying away from them, despite being rated for 1866 seems like after 8GB or over 1866 people have too many problems with heat and just getting them set up, + can get the 2500K for less than the 8150 and it outperforms the Dozer, but that was one of the better reads I've come across to provide options

Ya, if I didn't already have the motherboard, I would have gone with an i7.

I also need to check my cooler. I'm using a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ with Arctic Silver 5, and hitting 65c after 15 minutes of running Prime95. That's at stock settings too.

[Tradesman]

Well good luck with it, we're to help where we can

[reknyard]

So Maxxarcade how is that ram running? Is everything stable now? If it is what did you do for the bios settings/timings? If I can get this ram to run stable I wont buy some new stuff.

[Maxxarcade]

So Maxxarcade how is that ram running? Is everything stable now? If it is what did you do for the bios settings/timings? If I can get this ram to run stable I wont buy some new stuff.

Once I had it in the proper sockets, all I had to do was set the EOCP to Profile 1. Everything else was on automatic. No issues yet that I can see. I ran Prime95 blend for 20 minutes or so until the CPU was at 65 degrees, and the system never locked up. Winsat Mem reported 20GB/sec on the memory.