880gm-e43 OC genie lite issue

[VolumetricSteve]

I recently got the MSI 880GM-E43 motherboard, 8GB of Corsair XMS3 dual channel 1600MHz memory, and the AMD T110 Black Edition 3.3 GHz 6-core chip.

I had a build previously that was using a non-black edition processor and the wrong kind of ram that was actually intended for use in Intel systems and I was able to get that system to run stable at about 4.5GHz, but the memory timings always sucked. They'd come up as 1213MHz or something.

I'm hoping now that I've done more research, built my own system, and got much higher quality parts, that I can hit 4.5GHz again while having my ram correctly clocked at 1600.

By default, my new system wants to have them run at 1333, but when I let OC Genie Lite run, my ram comes up as 1250-ish or something like that. However, it does automatically get my CPU up to 4.425GHz, which is a start, and the system was stable enough at those settings to install linux.

Does OC Genie only work with certain kinds of ram...or is there some step I need to do before letting OC Genie do its thing?

 

[aries2110]

You need to stop using auto OCing and OC manually using your BIOS. Many of the settings needed to make an OC stable are not covered by auto settings. 99% of people who have used it will tell you that OC genie sucks.

 

[QuietIce]

...

 

[aries2110]

You'll also find that OCing isn't as difficult as some would imagine. There is no single magical setting for everything, but it really truly is just a matter of what works and what doesn't.

For the record the settings your motherboard detects for RAM are usually wrong, especially if the RAM is a "non standard" configuration like Intel optimised RAM in an AMD machine. As far as I know you should be able to manually set your RAM to its rated speed and timings and run fine. Mine rubns like a champ and is also Intel optimised.

Also because your Thuban is a Black Edition chip you should be able to leave your RAM at stock and OC using the multiplier which leaves your RAM and FSB alone.

 

[VolumetricSteve]

to OCF!

I'd be very curious to know what you used to test stability on your previous machine.


[...] the BIOS seldom yields good results compared to what can be done manually. [...]

Thank you.

My old system was....insane...It was my first OC and I admittedly had no idea what I was doing. It was a combination of diamond thermal paste, OC Genie Lite, manual FSB tweaking, the AOD utility, and a heatsink the size of the continental united states. My test for stability comes from Q3map2, which is the compiler used for Quake 3-engine maps. For some of the maps I've created, they can take days...or they used to until I learned more about it.

Feel free to frequent my establishment:

http://sirventolin.webs.com/compiler.htm

That page is a little outdated, my site has kinda fallen by the wayside in light of my latest projects. Sometime around Halloween of last year, sitting next to an open door (it was FREEZING cold outside) I was able to get it to run at 4.6GHz for about...4 hours as I recall, and it ran at 4.7GHz for a solid 5 minutes. When I kept it at 4.5GHz~4.4GHz it was stable enough I could do 4 and 5 day compiles without issues.

Also, I agree that OC Genie is really not what I want to rely on, it did some really...stupid things with my memory timings and..yeah...a feature like that really should be more polished before they make as big a deal out of it as they do.

You'll also find that OCing isn't as difficult as some would imagine. There is no single magical setting for everything, but it really truly is just a matter of what works and what doesn't.

For the record the settings your motherboard detects for RAM are usually wrong [...]

Also because your Thuban is a Black Edition chip you should be able to leave your RAM at stock and OC using the multiplier which leaves your RAM and FSB alone.

These were my suspicions as well, I was hoping that I could take the lazy way out...but...looks like it's time to bring out the elbow grease.

I'd like to get my XMS3 up to 1600 in ganged mode, but I've read a lot about people having issues with that.

I have about 27 days before I've gotta take it back to the store if it doesn't work out (the ram) and...I may have to just focus on the CPU OC and then get some low-power, stable Samsung ram which would save me about 50 bucks.

What are your experiences with ganged mode and overclocking?

Thanks for the replies so far!

 

[aries2110]

Personally have never OC'd with ganged mode as I have found unganged to offer higher memory bandwidth and better overall stability. Is there a specific reason you need to use ganged mode?

 

[VolumetricSteve]

Heh, I thought ganged mode was supposed to provide higher bandwidth. It appears I'm confused.

I know the Phenom 2 chips have 2 memory channels. Now....is each channel 64-bit...or 128-bit....or...for that matter, does ganged mode have anything to do with dual channel mode? I thought unganged was single channel, and ganged was dual channel. Where did I derp?

Edit:

I just found this:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3120280

which...seems kinda clear, my application can run in TONS of threads so....I guess I'll leave my system unganged. This is good, this should make overclocking easier. I'm still not sure why the option to switch between ganged and unganged exists though.

 

[aries2110]

Some people have found performance or stability benefits when using ganged mode. 99% of people will not use it, but the 1% who do use it know what it's for and how it helps. It particularly helps for performance and compatibility with older games, among the very few things the average user might actually need it for.

Basically, ganged mode sees them as one single 128-bit channel of memory. Unganged mode sees them as 2 separate 64-bit channels. But it has nothing to do with single or dual channel, only how the sticks themselves pass data back and forth. As previously mentioned ganged mode can offer some benefits, but the speed of modern computers is such that it doesn't matter. Unganged mode is more stable, usually faster, and usually OCs better. I think the main difference is for processing very large amounts of information, number crunching, encoding etc. Ganged mode would be more useful in a high end workstation or a server.

 

[trents]

So you're not running Windows at all and all your stress testing has been done in Linux? I have serious doubts as to whether the core are being 100% stressed like they would be in Prime95.

 

[VolumetricSteve]

So you're not running Windows at all and all your stress testing has been done in Linux? I have serious doubts as to whether the core are being 100% stressed like they would be in Prime95.

if anything I'd think a core (I assume you mean cpu) benchmark would be more comprehensive in linux, but I'm no expert and at this juncture I'm only looking at speeding up my ram.

Speaking of which, I'm testing my ram which should have timings of 9-9-9-24, but when I told my system to overclock my memory to 1600, my timings changed to 9-11-11-29 so it is...a little faster, but not much, certainly not worth 100 dollars more for ram.

Should I be able to hit 1600 at 9-9-9-24 timings? or will this do bad things to my ram? Thanks.

Edit:

I'm testing currently @ 1600 with 9-9-9-29 timings (I can't manually change the last number...the computer sets it to 29) and for some reason I'm only getting 4477MB/s I feel like that should be MUCH higher. Am I missing something? Plus it's reporting my CPU's Level 3 cache as providing 8,355MB/s which....can't be right...I thought ram speeds are supposed to be up past 25GB/s now, so cache HAS to be faster, right?