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Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3

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moccor

Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2013
I purchased this board and have been messing around with it a bit today. Unlike my previous Gigabyte board, this one seems to work. Currently, though without much testing, I'm running @3.9Ghz (200*19.5) with a vcore of 1.380. My problem is, my RAM is being weird. It seems to not like the CPU overclocked or something. It is showing 3.98GB RAM usable. If I revert to default, 8GB is available. I even managed to get it to 3.8Ghz and with 8GB of RAM. But even though I saved that profile and reverted to it after other overclocks failed, now the RAM is being weird again. Is there some setting I should enable or disable? I am running the XMP profile of 9-9-9-25-33-1T on my RAM @ 1.500.

Also, upon searching it seems common with 970 boards, but many of the threads I checked on multiple sites went unanswered

And yes, I still do hate Gigabyte. But as yous know, all other AM3+ motherboards in the 100$ range have VRM failures, except this one. And it was 10% off haha. But I am still filing a complaint with the BBB about Gigabyte.
 
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You're not giving a whole lot of info on your system. More details would help. And yes i've seen this in these forums before. But.....I don't remember if it was ram speed related or what. Your CPU is?
EDIT: I found the post I had in mind it was a CPU with a broken pin. Different symptoms though.
 
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Well I have a sig, but this site is being weird and iffy when editing signatures. It's view-able on my 'about me' but not here atm for whatever reason. And no I don't mean this like its your fault for checking. lemme see if I can get it fixed.

Edit: added some text to the sig and now it shows haha.
 
First I would try dropping the ram speed to 1333 and see if it shows as 8Gb at 3.9. If it does then you have a couple of choices. Loosen the ram timings for the 1600 or keeep the timings at 1333 and raise the fsb until the 4g disappear again.
The 965 officially supports 1333 ram but will run the 1600, you just may have to lower the timings a bit.
You could try 9-9-9-27 2T that may work.
 
I will give it a try now, thanks for the help and quick response.
 
yeah... from my own experiences with the PhIIx4 965be, and what i've read elsewhere, the 965be seems to get a bit unstable with ram timed over 1333... that doesn't mean you can't use 1600 ram... only you might need to play with it a bit. I know I had a dickens of a time figuring out how to stabilize my overclock/ram with my ddr3 1600 ram.

some things to think about, your cpu-nb/ht speeds and voltages for the cpu-nb/ht and ram, as well as the ram timings. those will be the main things you'll be playing with. i suggest you take it step by step while you play with your ram and how it interacts with your cpu. in my case the issue was voltages. i had to bump the cpu-nb and ram voltages up a bit to stabalize the system. that doesn't mean it's your solution, only that for my system that turned out to be the main trick in the puzzle. Good luck!
 
Ya every combo is different. My setup has 16gig of 1600 @ 1666 and never gave me a stitch of problems. But I did bump the NB voltage to 1.25 right out of the gate.
 
Yeah I learned a lot from the Overclockers.com forum members and guides. I tried what you said, first by loosening the timings. And that was fine, 8GB is usable. So since I ad the 3.9Ghz and 8GB of RAM, I decided to increase the NB voltage and CPU NB frequency. I chose 1.250 and 2400, to which the RAM didn't like, as it showed the 3.98 usable memory. So I lowered the NB voltage to 1.200 and now the RAM is fine again. But whether the 2400 CPU NB is stable or not, I am not sure yet.

Side note: if my RAM was at 9-9-9-25-33-1T, should that require a voltage increase? I would doubt it, or at least a slight increase like .005. Maybe I should try that as well.
 
Well if the ram is fine I wouldn't think it's necessary. If you have trouble in stability testing it's worth a try otherwise no.
 
Well I tried setting the memory to 1600 by setting it to 6x and upping the FSB, but my setup doesn't like that. Nor does it even like running a FSB of 210 @ 1600 RAM speeds. Which probably turns out to like 1660Mhz (guesstimate). But I have gotten my PC to accept 1680 on the Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 so that shouldn't be a issue. Also, that was at the loosened timings. But that's fine, overclocked RAM doesn't give a big improvement past 1600 from what I read. I'm just gonna focus on getting the CPU and NB stable. I thought the RAM and CPU settings in my sig were stable, but after shutting down my PC last night and then turning it on today, it didn't like the settings. So I'm just gonna start testing @ 3.6Ghz. It's weird though, I was testing it last night with about a hour of Prime95 + running League of Legends in spectate mode and alt tabbing a lot to try and stress it harder, but it was fine.
 
When I mentioned the fsb that was with underclocked ram. But that's fine whatever works. I just thought if you continue to OC the CPU you'll end up needing to up the FSB at some point and your ram divider will have to be dropped back. Catch my drift??
 
Yeah I understand you now. Though I'm not sure if increasing the FSB is a option for me yet. Although, I increased the RAM voltage from 1.500 to 1.550 and so far it seems pretty stable @ 3.92Ghz with a 1.392-1.404vcore and the RAM running at the settings you suggested. I couldn't even get a stable 3.6Ghz @1.45vcore on the faulty motherboard Gigabyte swore was fine. But I haven't increased the NB freq, though I have been running the NB voltage @ 1.200 just so I can see where my temps are. Big difference going from UltraDurable2 to 4. Even though I applied the thermal paste yesterday (AS5), its already running 8C lower than the max I was getting before. Same goes for the NB temp too, that's about 12C lower.
 
Ya the stronger board will make a difference in temps. The power section is stronger with more available power so I doesn't have to work as hard. That's a good clock though. I don't know how high you want to shoot for but you will soon hit a point where it's gonna need a lot more volts for small gains.Have you ran any kind of stability test? You should run Prime95 for atleast 20 minutes on blend mode and use HWmonitor freee version to monitor your temps
 
I actually use both of those programs haha. I run HWiNFO everyday to monitor temps. And to stress test, I'm running prime95, a skype call and playing League of Legends lol. Full 60fps and max temp is 48C, GPU is 59C (but LoL isn't very graphic intensive). And yeah I've read of the diminishing overclocks. I'll take it as high as I can around the 1.400vcore range.
 
Some good news. Unlike the previous overclock of 3.9Ghz that I have yet to edit in my sig, the suggested values for RAM timings you gave me allowed my PC to boot right back up np after shutting down and having 8GB of usable RAM. So I'll save this overclock profile and work up from here.
 
Another thing that yous could possibly help me with. I contacted Gigabyte about it months ago, but they are idiots. Here is a screenshot of the ticket that I stopped responding to, because this person was the 2nd tech support to be completely ignorant and oblivious to anything I said.

ignorantgigabytetechnic.png


I'm not sure whats up with these Gigabyte boards, but they are advertised to support SPDIF output. But I have yet to get it to work on either of the Gigabyte boards, but I have done it before on a cheap 45$ ECS board in the past, so I know how to do it. I am using the little SPDIF cable that came with my videocard and the 2 little connections are connected right to the motherboard. Gigabytes site and downloads have the VIA driver, which I tried already to no success (also on the previous board). But for some reason this board says on Newegg that it uses Realtek ALC889. I trust Gigabyte would know their motherboards better than Newegg. I searched a bit, some people said it required the VIA + Realtek drivers. So I installed them both. Still doesn't work. There are many threads on Google about SPDIF output not working on Gigabyte boards, but I found no good answer. And as you can see in the screenshot, Gigabyte isn't a option to go to either... so pathetic of them. Also, I said nothing about going for Dolby Digital, I just wanted the 5.1 sound. Which is why I stopped responding, because hes clearly incapable of reading anything I said. Never had so many problems with anything hardware related until I bought a Gigabyte motherboard... And I know I sound a little mean in calling them dumb, but if they are going to "answer" a ticket, then they should read the ticket and not just waste peoples time that was put into making it and their future responses.
 
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If you're trying to run it through the card there's also a specific DVI to HDMI adapter, right?.
 
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