shrimpbrime, he's beyomd guides, there is just some gems in those.
as I am a memory noob you might give both he and I a little schooling up?
OK, I'll do a straight forward generalization of IMC or integrated memory controllers.
Phenom II had 2 classes of IMC on their cpus. The T series chips such as 1090T and 970T ect. in my experience, no white papers, had much better memory controllers, almost as good as FX in a lot of cases running air or liquid cooling. I did NOT find one single quad Phenom II that wasn't a T series chip that could clock high on low Ram volts.
Some people swear by NB/CPU voltage increase for better memory stability at an overclock. I found this to be mostly untrue. Fact was for me that the Ram voltage always had more effect on overclocks.
IE: 1100mhz at cas 9 would take a minimum of 1.68v with my Mushkin 1866 ram in dual or single channel mode populating only 2 ram slots. Always in the past AMD did and still does better running only one stick of ram in single channel.
Now my Llano IMC is decent. But not better than Phenom II being the A8 are based of Phenom II core technology. This changed with the A10's. These are based off FX and have a much better memory controller. Any how, the Llano took a max clock of 1200mhz effective and around 2.0v. I can effectively get this same speed on the 1155 3770K with far less voltage and also with the FX platforms as well. usually no more than 1.8v give or take on temps naturally.
Which brings us down to cooling once again. A hot set of Ram sticks just simply won't clock well. Some sticks run better naked chips exposed and a fan right on em'
So in a nut shell, three main things. IMC capability, Voltage requirements from IMC capability and just as important... cooling. Never OC your ram without active cooling.
Up to 1100mhz 1.68v Cas 9-10-9-27-36 - Same speed lower cas 10-11-10-x-x at only 1.5v. PiMod, Cas 9 wins.
i7 3770K and FX-83xx can run in my experience 1200mhz effective Cas 12-12-12-30-50 around 1.75v. Again this voltage will vary depending on temps. Winter temps usually net lower voltages system wide.
AMD = loves tight timings, great for benching and all around daily system use.
I did also find that overclocking AMD IMC and RAM from the stock 1333 divider has net me some of the best memory benchmarking scores. I have no clue as to why this is either. I've tried wrapping my brain around it, but not too much. I just figure, go with it and have fun.
As you saw in the picture above, the bus is at 250. This helps change the memory divider for easy access to 2000mhz for example. have never had an issue running this bus frequency even with a brand new cpu from the box.
Memory overclocking can be a hassle. but after time, it gets pretty easy when the memory controllers just play so nicely and the Ram manufacturers are getting better at making low volt high clocked chips.
