Need help reaching 1600Mhz on Gigabyte UD4P w/ 12gb G.SKILL RAM

Hi Guys,

I'm really hoping you guys can help me on this one. I've tried a TON of settings to get this memory to run stable at 1600 MHz. I'm at a total loss at this point so any knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Specs are:

Intel i7 920
Gigabyte EX58-UD4P Mobo - Latest F7 BIOS
12gb of G.SKILL F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ RAM
XFX GTX-260 896mb Black Edition GPU
Vista 64
Corsair CMPSU-750TX PSU

I have the timings at the stock 9-9-9-24-2. All other timings and voltages (except QPI and DRAM) are set to Auto. BCLK is at Auto (133) and memory multiplier is at 12.0. Turbo mode is also enabled. I did try the XMP Profile, but that overvolted the system.

The default DRAM on these is 1.5v and default QPI is 1.15v, but those settings didn't work. The closest I've come to getting this setup stable at 1600 is DRAM 1.5v (default) and QPI 1.2v I've also managed to get it to boot at DRAM 1.54v and QPI 1.24. However, after about 30 minutes of use both settings caused BSOD. Going up or down on either side of these QPI voltages caused the system not to boot (usually on lower QPI voltages) or turned on the overvoltage LEDs in the NB, CPU and Memory (at least one, if not all three).

I did run memtest86+ on the above two settings with the DRAM 1.5v setting receiving the best scores (12 errors in an 8 hour period on the first test and no errors in a 2 hour period on the second test).

I'm really stuck on where to go from here. I obviously don't want to overvolt the system and have all these lights pop on. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Its Ok to set the memory voltage to 1.65max and at 1600mhz thats a very normal voltage.

As for your timings leave it on auto and set the dram ratio correctly to get 1600mhz.

The reason most people use 1600mhz is when overclocked you get in the ballpark of 4ghz with a 920.

Welcome to the Forum

Took you're advice and it worked great! I had to modify the DRAM (1.54v) and QPI (1.24v) a bit, but Auto settings on the timings were definitely the right ticket. Memtest86+ passed with flying colors too!

Thanks a ton!

Filling all slots usually limits your o/c a bit. Price you pay for extra load on the memory controller with all that ram to address! More voltage or lower speed are the solutions, you obviously took the former!

Make sure you arent generating any errors in ram or it will affect long term stability.

Sounds good. Try running Prime95 Blend test to be sure that your RAM is completely stable.

I suppose I spoke to soon.

So I had a weekend of "apparently" error free usage with some medium CPU and multi-tasking load (photoshop, torrents, etc.). Everything was working great until last night. Tried doing some file splitting with an 8gb file and the system took a major dump. Had a string of BSODs and a couple of hard freezes. Tried going 0.02 +/- in the QPI to no avail.

Which leads me to my next question: Is it possible that there's something bigger at work here - Vista issues, faulty hardware, new architecture limitations / early revisions? Is it possible I would still have memory issues after a solid weekend of seemingly stable use?

If it still sounds like it's the memory then I'm starting to think that 1600MHz just isn't possible with 12gb. I figure the only choice is to move to trying 1333MHz - a crappy compromise IMO, but I feel I'm out of options.

So any any other suggestions for 1600MHz before I abandon this quest and shift to 1333? Any advice on switching to 1333? I'm definitely going to take Shadowmage's suggestion and use Prime95 for future testing.

Thanks again for your help!

Prime95 is the standard, it works. One thing that helped me when I OC'ed w/ DDR3 1600 on a gigabyte mobo was leaving ALL mem timings on auto while I was oc'ing, then once I had a good stable oc, I started bringing the timings back down.