Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

[ChrisPowers]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hey folks,


I'm hoping someone might have an answer for me in this thread. I apologize if this has been answered before, but I haven't been able to find anyone with this exact problem.

I am unable to get my RAM frequency to 1600MHz, no matter what settings I choose in BIOS. Here's what I've got:


Sniper 3, F7 BIOS
3770K, overclocked to 4.5GHz
Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)


Essentially, I've tried setting XMP to Profile 1, I've tried setting the multiplier to 16 manually, I've tried setting Performance Enhance to Turbo, and all the combinations thereof. No matter what I do, the RAM frequency reads 1333MHz in the BIOS "Current Status" screen, and 667 in CPU-Z. It's almost as if it completely ignores the settings. I haven't touched the timings, or really done anything more complicated than the above.


Recently, I swung by the Corsair forum and noticed they don't list that specific memory as being compatible with the Sniper 3, which obviously caught me by surprise. Can anyone confirm that this RAM is indeed not compatible with this motherboard? If not, does anyone know of any plans to support it in the future, or do I need to look into pawning off my perfectly good RAM on eBay? Otherwise, can someone provide some guidance as to what I may be doing wrong?




Thanks,
ChrisPowers

[Amurtigress]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@ChrisPowers:

Having four modules in a 3770-based system means you are running in dual channel mode with all two banks used.

Usually that means you are putting twice the electric load on a memory controller than only using two modules. THis means the signals on the mainboard between the modules and CPU are getting "dirtier" and require to go down one notch below the rating. Not ALWAYS but USUALLY. But using all banks instead of only one will ALWAYS mean a reduction in overclocking or not reaching rated speeds--That much is a law of physics.

Them being 1600s does not exactly mean they are the best on the market either. The higher the clock rating, the lower the electric (capacitive/resistive) load per bank. Imagine it being like two lightbulbs parallel in the same power circuit sucking twice the power.

Don't forget: The world is always analogue, not digital....

However you might still hit 1600 if you are loosing your timings, i.e. 9-9-9-28 to 11-11-11-34.

Give it a shot with only two modules in 1600. Fine of that works, my theory applies then. If not you might be facing a BIOS problem there or plain a lil bit of incompatibility.

[ChrisPowers]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@ChrisPowers:

Having four modules in a 3770-based system means you are running in dual channel mode with all two banks used.

Usually that means you are putting twice the electric load on a memory controller than only using two modules. THis means the signals on the mainboard between the modules and CPU are getting "dirtier" and require to go down one notch below the rating. Not ALWAYS but USUALLY. But using all banks instead of only one will ALWAYS mean a reduction in overclocking or not reaching rated speeds--That much is a law of physics.

Them being 1600s does not exactly mean they are the best on the market either. The higher the clock rating, the lower the electric (capacitive/resistive) load per bank. Imagine it being like two lightbulbs parallel in the same power circuit sucking twice the power.

Don't forget: The world is always analogue, not digital....

However you might still hit 1600 if you are loosing your timings, i.e. 9-9-9-28 to 11-11-11-34.

Give it a shot with only two modules in 1600. Fine of that works, my theory applies then. If not you might be facing a BIOS problem there or plain a lil bit of incompatibility.

Hey man,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm hardly an expert at this, so please bear with me if these questions seem elementary, as they probably are.

It seems to me you're saying that the RAM isn't getting enough juice to run at 1600. Does that mean that upping the voltage in the right spots might make that possible? Or is loosening the timings the only shot I have at hitting 1600?

If the former, any hints on what settings to look at and what voltages to try?

If the latter, I would then conclude that my RAM is going to be running slower than if I had 16GB installed, which, for now, is probably more than enough. If that is indeed the case (which I'll test as soon as I get home by pulling out two sticks), would you recommend sticking with less RAM at a faster speed rather than more RAM at a slower speed?

Finally, I did some research which seemed to suggest that 1600 MHz is the point of best value after which you start to see diminishing returns (i.e. the cost to performance ratio is too high to justify spending so much money). Obviously, that's somewhat subjective, but if you don't agree, can you recommend an alternative RAM I should take a look at?

Thanks again,
ChrisPowers

[Amurtigress]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hey man,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm hardly an expert at this, so please bear with me if these questions seem elementary, as they probably are.

It seems to me you're saying that the RAM isn't getting enough juice to run at 1600. Does that mean that upping the voltage in the right spots might make that possible? Or is loosening the timings the only shot I have at hitting 1600?

If the former, any hints on what settings to look at and what voltages to try?

If the latter, I would then conclude that my RAM is going to be running slower than if I had 16GB installed, which, for now, is probably more than enough. If that is indeed the case (which I'll test as soon as I get home by pulling out two sticks), would you recommend sticking with less RAM at a faster speed rather than more RAM at a slower speed?

Finally, I did some research which seemed to suggest that 1600 MHz is the point of best value after which you start to see diminishing returns (i.e. the cost to performance ratio is too high to justify spending so much money). Obviously, that's somewhat subjective, but if you don't agree, can you recommend an alternative RAM I should take a look at?

Thanks again,
ChrisPowers

As for not getting enough juice, it is possible that a bit more voltage could help it. If your memory is rated for 1.5V, I'd go up to app. 1.65V.

The settings I mean are the first four. As I said, 8-8-8-24 as an example upped to maybe 10-10-10-30 at 1600.

Loosening the timings is to a degree the same as in upping voltage. More voltage makes semiconductors react a bit quicker, with certain limits. Loosening timings means making the memory controller wait a bit longer to accomodate the shortcomings of your memory at the given clock rate.

What else you can do is getting DDR3-2000 or 2133 RAM and get maybe 1866 MHz speed or for sure 1600. I am using G.Skill ARES PC3-17000 (DDR3-2133) quad kit that cost me about 129 Euros on a socket 2011 quad channel system, no issues hitting 2000 or 2133. However on my system one bank consists of 4 memory slots, not two like on your system.

Now as for what's better...that's personal taste. 16 GB are more than enough, 32 GB won't buy you any extra performance unless you really need that much for photoshopping or rendering, but in that case you might be better off with a 6-core socket 2011 system anyway.

Yet you paid for 32 GB and you might feel better with using what you paid for....

Losing some clock speed prolly does not make much of a difference either.

You might want to try Passmark for system performance ratings, not sure tho if that's the best way to test it.

Also, consider if it's a good idea to have 32 GB to begin with. Windows 7 creates a hiberfil.sys at the same size of your physical installed RAM. Losing that much on your SSD (if you have one) might be totally pointless and a problem if your SSD is smallish.

[ChrisPowers]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Damn trade-offs! Why can't we just have everything we want maxed out without ever having to compromise anywhere?!

Anyway, whining aside, thanks a ton for all the info. I really appreciate you taking the time to address all my questions.

For me, the speed is more important, and I have no problem selling the RAM and eating the loss. I might even be able to pawn it off to a friend for cheap. I did realize that I was spending a bit more than I would otherwise have strictly for aesthetic reasons, as I felt that the Dominator Platinum RAM looked sick, but still, at that price, I never expected to have to pay any mind to it whatsoever.

I do have a 256GB SSD, but 32GB is still a big chunk out of that. I'll have to ponder what to do next. Pulling out the two sticks and checking the speed will go a long way toward helping me decide. I could always put my RAM away for the time being until the day should come that I actually end up needing it. After all, there was a time when people scoffed at the idea of ever needing 64KB RAM, let alone 32GB.

[ChrisPowers]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Just a quick update on this.

I took your suggestion and tried upping the voltage a bit first. Set it to 1.6V and immediately the RAM began reporting 1600MHz. I never expected it to behave in that way, where too little voltage, instead of failing to work at all with bad settings, would actually just scale them back to something it could handle without giving any indication as to why. That's my newbie mistake.

Unfortunately, I got a crash at some point while running Prime95 around 12 hours in (although that may have been related more to temps on the processor than anything else, as I had my AC off during the day when temps were in the 90s F). Since then, I bumped the voltage up to 1.65V and was able to run IntelBurnTest successfully at 2048, as well as 24 hours of Prime95 on Blend (with the AC on 78 degrees this time).

Thanks for your help on this. I'm guessing I may be able to go higher if I rip out 16GB of RAM, but at this point, I'm happy to leave well enough alone. It was never my intention to win any speed awards, just to get the most out of the components I have.

Thanks again,
ChrisPowers

[Mixa]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hi guys! I searched the web for this problem and found some great answers on this forum, so i have to ask experts here. Also e-mail was sent to Gigabyte but i got no reply.

I bought new machine with Gigabyte 970A-UD3 Rev 3.0 motherboard (came with latest bios firmware FC), AMD FX 6300, 8GB kingston 1866mhz ram, leadtek 450 gts graphics...

Problem is very strange with sleep mode (otherwise machine works great).
Pc didn't want to wake up at all (mouse , keyboard or power button press ) from sleep. Searched the web and found that setting "allow hybrid sleep" to off option will help and it did, pc woke up.

But now machine wakes up and works great for about an hour. Then mouse arrow starts changing shape, then mouse gets frozen for a few seconds, then keyboard, and that happens more and more often and periods of freezing are longer, until machine just freezes up completely and restart solves this.

I get these errors in Event Viewer -> System:

Event 12, HAL :The platform firmware has corrupted memory across the previous system power transition. Please check for updated firmware for your system.
Event 14, nvlddmkm.dll: The description for Event ID 14 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If i only use shutdown and power on pc, everything works fine and i get no errors in event viewer logs. Only after pc is woke up from sleep i get these problems and logs.
Do you know what can i do to solve this annoying issue?

Thanks a lot!

[Hellsrage]

GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 3 RMA for Rev.4?

Hello, a little while ago I purchased an GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 3 that also came bundled with a AMD FX-8350 on NewEgg. At the time I thought it was a great deal, I wanted an AMD FX-8350 and I had had good experiences with Gigabyte products in the past, but my happiness was drawn short.


Shortly after building my computer I came to know of a pretty serious problem with the compatibility of your GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 3 and AMD FX-8350s and for some even FX-8320s. I know the problems have been reported and well documented by owners on a few sites we even tried to show Gigabyte Support our problem but they stated what we could with our own eyes as false. In the end it's a very long story but basically the VRMs on the GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 3 would reach a temp at which they would start to throttle the voltage in what I can only assume is an attempt to stop the board from killing itself. This is believed to be caused because either the VRMs themselves can't handle the load an FX-8350 requires or that the heat sinks weren't effective enough in drawing enough heat away, maybe a combination of both we never got an official statement. One thing is for sure though the heat caused a load of issues for a lot of us, I can't run certain programs without my CPU throttling and the heat seems to be causing some bad warping near the VRMs.


After hearing news of a GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 4 I am actually wanting to bother RMAing my UD3, can I have my Rev. 3 replaced with a Rev. 4?

If you can't, why not? The board was marketed as being able to support the FX series CPU and it fails to do so with the newest 8 core CPUs, why am I being left with a bad board?

[profJim]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

@nouserr
I moved your post to its own thread http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte...-ddr3-ram.html four hours ago.
I sent you a private message (PM) but you haven't read it yet.
I've posted some detailed information that should help.
Please post a link in your new thread to the Kingston webpage that has the specifications for your memory kit.

[drf]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!



ok so i am using the mod bios and i have few questions. i can see that this site has so much info i been reading for days...
i got 2 scandisk sata SSD 128 6gb speed - raided 0 on port 1 and 2 which is the intel
i moved them to the marvell ports - in marvell bios it does show 2 drives active in raid and it is set to be the start disk but it boots to it and says
no operating system found... move it back to intel controller and everything is fine...
ok i i read that intel controller is better, thats fine.
from my diskmark picture can you tell me if this disk can go faster
from the devices picture - do i have the best intel storage driver installed??

i also want to overclock this
Gigabyte X38/P35/P965 (DS* DQ* S3) Overclocking and General BIOS tweaking Guide
i see this guide but not sure which is my board
can anyone post me link to bios tweaking guide for the G1. guerrilla

so last night installed newest intel raid storage driver which has settings for write-cache and cache mode
i set it to DISABLE write--cache buffer flushing with write back cache mode - now the disk only gets 368 mb read
lol - not as good as the 400 plus i had. i put it back to old driver and speed is the same.

im looking for good fastest bios settings and looking for advice on the best driver for raiding 2 SSD drives
i did put info for my box, i dont see it but i hope you all can. not real savy on how the forum works
any info would be great, i will answer any questions

[stasio]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

I suggest to use Intel ports.
If you use Marwell ports,be sure to install drivers prior move to Marwell.

[Mergho]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hello, I'm trying to install wi8 from a bootable usb device, i've this screen for more than 30 minutes now ..any help ?

[stasio]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hi and welcome to our forum.
Did your USB is FAT32 formatted,bootable and set in BIOS as first boot?
How you copy bootable ISO (Win 8) to your USB?

[Mergho]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Hi and welcome to our forum.
Did your USB is FAT32 formatted,bootable and set in BIOS as first boot?
How you copy bootable ISO (Win 8) to your USB?

Thank You
it's NTFS formatted.. i set the BIOS as the following: 1st boot dev. USB-ZIP, 2nd USB-HDD, 3rd USB-CDROM
i made it via Windows7-USB-DVD-tool

[stasio]

Re: Welcome to GIGABYTE Technical Support!

Here is some instructions:
How To Install Windows 8 From a USB Device
How to Create Windows 8 Bootable USB Drive
Transfer a Windows 8 ISO to a bootable USB flash drive - TechRepublic