Asus m4a77td

[m33pm33p]

Been creeping around here for a while and just finnaly signed up last night. Had a question for your guys that Ive tried to research a bit but still a little iffy on what it means. I recently built my first desktop and the motherboard I used was the ASUS M4A77TD. The ram specs for the board are listed as DDR3 1800(O.C.)/1600(O.C.)/1333(O.C.)/1066 Im currently sitting with 4gigs (2X2GB) of crucial in it at 1066. Do the specs mean this is the only type of ram I can use but the 1066 ram itself can be overclocked? Or am I able to throw faster RAM in it and the CPU itself will overclock? Thanks

 

[lopri]

What is your CPU? And what is the exact rating of your memory sticks? DDR3-1066/9-9-9?

AM3 CPUs officially support up to DDR3-1333, but in most boards you will find 4 memory ratios available: 800 (3:6), 1066 (3:8), 1333 (3:10), 1600 (3:12). The BIOS will read the memory sticks' SPD (which is what the memory is rated and programmed to run at) and will pick one of the ratios by default. In your case it is 1066, meaning the board is reading your sticks' rated speed and setting the ratio to 1066 (3:8).

If your memory sticks are capable, you can manually change the ratio to 3:10 (DDR3-1333) or 3:12 (DDR3-1600). Beyond DDR3-1600 can only be achieved by overclocking the base clock, HTT.

 

[m33pm33p]

I am currently running-

AMD Phenom II X4 945 Deneb 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDX945WFGMBOX

Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT25664BA1067

Timing for that crucial are, 7-7-7-20

 

[lopri]

Are you comfortable at overclocking via BIOS?

 

[m33pm33p]

Comfortable and knowledgeable are two different things haha. Ive been doing quite a bit of reading up on overclocking just about everything, Not to sure on what Im doing yet but I learn pretty quickly. Ive taken a look at it in BIOS before but didnt really know what exactly to set what to at the time. What exactly were you thinking?

 

[lopri]

I was thinking of a situation when you change memory divider or frequency resulting in no POST. If you are comfortable with such, then you could try changing the divider from 1066 (3:8) to 1333 (3:10). Technically you are overclocking the memory which is spec'ed for 1066/CL7. A lot of sticks will do 1333/CL7 or 1333/CL8, but it is not guaranteed.

 

[Ancalagon44]

I've got the same motherboard (well, the pro one) - the nice thing is that if you screw up your overclock, on the next boot it tells you that your overclock was a failure and asks if you want to reset bios settings to default. Big help.

You can also try AMD Overdrive which allows you to overclock from within windows, tends to crash my PC a lot though.

Also try updating your bios via the utility included on the CD - read through the changes and you will see CPU support has been updated, and stability and performance improved.

I'm running Team Xtreme DDR3 at 1533 @ 9-9-9-24, with an Athlon II 620 X4, x13 multiplier and 230 FSB for something like 2990 MHz. Stability isnt wonderful, well it wasnt before I updated the bios so hopefully that helped. Not sure if I'm running my memory too high, its rated at 2000 @ 9-9-9-24 but A) thats manufacturer claims, B) not a well known brand.

To be specific, I used to run it at higher than 1800Mhz at those timings but it wasnt very stable, hence the new lower frequency which seems to have helped. But then it could have also been my FSB or NB frequency (NB multiplier at stock).

 

[m33pm33p]

Went into the BIOS, it actually had a setting to set the clock to one of the 4 speeds you listed. Set it at 1333 and restarted. CPU-Z now shows 9-9-9-25 and system is running stable.

ANC-Currenly running the most current BIOS update, is that what you are talking about?

 

[Ancalagon44]

Yeah, I hadnt updated mine since I got it, just updated the other day. Havent noticed too much of a difference, perhaps I need to run a new stability test to see what I can get away with now.