Question about memomry standards on ASUS AM3 boards

[scottw182]

I'm looking at ASUS's AM3 boards on newegg, and I'm confused by the memory standards. Here's the options I'm seeing:

DDR3 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 / 1066
DDR3 1600(O.C.) / 1333 / 1066
DDR3 1600(O.C.) / 1333
DDR3 1600

I'm probably going to be getting DDR3 1600 memory, do I need to get a board that supports it without overclocking? Does it even matter? Do you even have to overclock to achieve those speeds on those boards, or just be able to set the values manually? Well, I guess technically, that's what overclocking is. I'm not really an overclocker, I just want to run my stuff at the recommended settings. What's the deal with these boards specifying that you have to overclock to achieve those speeds?

 

[Marshmallow64]

If it says OC, that means that you need to manually go into the bios to set the ram speed, but it will handle the speed. If you are not really an overclocker I recommend you getting 1333 ram, or a board that will handle 1600 ram without O.C.

 

[MadInsane]

Go with the 790X Evo board. I'm running it w/ 8gb ddr1600 GSkill, 2600 nb, and 3.7ghz x4 955. Rock Solid! That's the one that does ddr3 1800 OC.

My first Gigabyte board said 1600 OC, BUT would NOT run 8gb of ddr3 1600. Take that into consideration, if you are filling all memory channels with 8gb memory, you are ending up overloading the memory controller. I could not get the gigabyte to run 1600 for the life of me w/ 8gb, no matter what voltage settings, bios updates, etc!

 

[pikeman]

good advice!

Go with the 790X Evo board. I'm running it w/ 8gb ddr1600 GSkill, 2600 nb, and 3.7ghz x4 955. Rock Solid! That's the one that does ddr3 1800 OC. SNIP!

I'm real happy to read this. Just ordered the Asus EVO and the memory AVL is hopelessly outdated. The GSkill product is competitively priced at Newegg.

To the guy who originally posted, Asus introduced a new board with every new chipset AMD has made and the non-OC'd speed has increased to 1600 on the EVO. I was real close to ordering a 770 chipset but glad I read the fine print on the 790X. This MB ought to be a real good one.
Have fun!

 

[MadInsane]

I'm real happy to read this. Just ordered the Asus EVO and the memory AVL is hopelessly outdated. The GSkill product is competitively priced at Newegg.

To the guy who originally posted, Asus introduced a new board with every new chipset AMD has made and the non-OC'd speed has increased to 1600 on the EVO. I was real close to ordering a 770 chipset but glad I read the fine print on the 790X. This MB ought to be a real good one.
Have fun!

Yup, exactly. The G.Skill is rated at 1.5V instead of 1.9V for other memory I've seen like Mushkin and OCZ. It doesn't need anything above 1.5V on this board! This is my 4th set of G.Skill ram, beginning with the DFI Nforce4 SLI motherboard and gskill ddr 400. lol, my how times have changed!!