Memory underclocked problem

[Kevin Smithers]

I recently bought a Gigabyte p31-es3g motherboard. In it's specs it said it
supported 1066mhz ddr2 memory. So i went and bought 2 x 1gb Corsair
TWIN2X2048-8500c5d PC8500 1066MHz, 5-5-5-15, Dominator E.P.P. Technology
Memory. But later i saw that it was a 2.1v model while my motherboard
supported 1.8v models. I thought "whatever, i'll just up the voltage in the
BIOS to 2.1 and that will do the trick." When i plugged it in, the bios
reported it working at 533mhz. But regardless of upping the voltage to 2.1 or
leaving it at 1.8 the clock doesn't change, it stays at 533mhz.

What am i getting wrong? What did i do wrong? What am i missing?

 

[Paul]

I recently bought a Gigabyte p31-es3g motherboard. In it's specs it said it
supported 1066mhz ddr2 memory. So i went and bought 2 x 1gb Corsair
TWIN2X2048-8500c5d PC8500 1066MHz, 5-5-5-15, Dominator E.P.P. Technology
Memory. But later i saw that it was a 2.1v model while my motherboard
supported 1.8v models. I thought "whatever, i'll just up the voltage in the
BIOS to 2.1 and that will do the trick." When i plugged it in, the bios
reported it working at 533mhz. But regardless of upping the voltage to 2.1 or
leaving it at 1.8 the clock doesn't change, it stays at 533mhz.

What am i getting wrong? What did i do wrong? What am i missing?

Some tools will display the clock rate, of 533MHz. Other tools
may display the data transfer rate, which is twice that amount,
or 1066 megatransfers/sec. So it depends on the context, and what
other options you see in that particular spot. If the memory setting
offered 266,333,400,533, that might correspond to DDR2-533, DDR2-667,
DDR2-800 or DDR2-1066.

Even when you check with CPUZ from cpuid.com, that is tricky as well.
I think that one shows frequency, so you'd see "533" in the display,
and the timings of 5-5-5-15. The user is expected to multiply the 533
by 2, to get the real transfer rate.

You only need to use as much boost for the DDR2 voltage, as is necessary
for error free operation. Assuming the operating speed really is
DDR2-1066, you can try it at 2.1V, then run Prime95 and see if
any errors happen. If it is error free, in a long run, drop the
voltage to 2.0V and try again.

For Prime95, select "stress testing" when it starts. You can use
the custom setting, if you want to select less memory to be tested.
When finished testing, select "stop", then "exit" from the menu.
You can let this run for up to, say, four hours, as a check of whether
your build is stable. I've had machines that would only run for a couple
seconds, before Prime throws an error. So if your setup isn't stable,
and cannot take the speed, you'll find out soon enough.

http://majorgeeks.com/Prime95_d4363.html

Paul

 

[JS]

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM