Change to XMP profile requires other changes?

Carth

Carth

Carth

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21 Dec 2004
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The RAM I bought is desigend to run at 1600MHz at 1.5v, and by default when I put it in the machine it ran at 1300MHz. So I decided the simplest thing to do is enable the XMP profile 1 in the BIOS, and then it does indeed run at 1600MHz.

My question is, do I need to do anything else. According to http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=5247&mpage=1 the uncore frequency should be twice that of memory frequency. Well it definitely isn't and would require some overclocking to be that, but that guide is pretty old and I'm not sure if it's correct.

Currently the settings are:
13z1szp.png


And the memory:
24g4yrn.png


I think the BIOS changed the Uncore to what it needs to be, because even before I changed it to XMP, the core speed and multiplier was different. Here is a picture I took last year from when I had different RAM that was running at 1066MHz:
2rqlkj9.png

1zmnlv9.png


So in summary:
1. Does this look OK (first 2 pictures) or do I need to change anything with the CPU?
2. Do I need to up VTT since uncore is running faster?
 
Well, been getting black screens of death (just an entirely black screen and computer on but unresponsive to anything except restart button). So under the assumption the memory is causing that, I have upped VTT slightly. Will see how it goes.
 
What RAM did you buy? Some 1600mhz kits need 1.65v in order to work.

As for the core speed, it's normal. When the CPU is on idle it will underclock and undervolt itself to save power. When the CPU is being used then it will ramp up to normal speeds.
 
Orcvader said:
What RAM did you buy? Some 1600mhz kits need 1.65v in order to work.
Click to expand...
I bought this: http://www.corsair.com/memory-by-pr...channel-ddr3-memory-kit-cml8gx3m2a1600c9.html

Orcvader said:
As for the core speed, it's normal. When the CPU is on idle it will underclock and undervolt itself to save power. When the CPU is being used then it will ramp up to normal speeds.
Click to expand...
Ah OK, thanks.

Do you reckon these black screen of death crashes are RAM-related? I think it's either that or GPU. But I'm pretty sure there were no black screen crashes before I switched it to 1600MHz XMP profile. I did however get brief (few second) black screens, after which Windows would say the display driver has stopped responding and has recovered. I have no way of telling if these are the same thing, there's no error log or anything. I'm gonna leave Prime95 running and see how stable it is.
 
Make sure that memory you have is set to 1.5V in the BIOS. Also if you have an overclocked CPU or GPU stick everything back to stock and redo your overclocks with the memory set on the XMP profile and at 1.5V, you may find your overclocks have become unstable with the new memory settings with the XMP profile.
 
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I haven't done any overclocks, but I have done what you said anyway. I ran Prime95 for 7 hours and also watched a movie while it was doing it. No errors and no black screen. Left computer on overnight, it was fine, then just now it did it again. It seems to only do it when using Firefox (which writes lots of small files to the hard drive). I think it's something to do with SATA sharing the GPU bandwidth on my motherboard (not sure of the specifics). Either that or the GPU is dying.

Anyways, I think the RAM is working fine. I just don't know what to do about these black screens (occasionally it recovers and says the GPU had stopped responding).

It's a brand new installation of Windows 7 on a new hard drive, so there should not be anything wrong. It must either be a hardware error, or bad setup in the BIOS or physical setup on the actual mobo. Or a bug in the drivers. It has all the latest drivers and latest BIOS, and it has been doing these black screens right from the start (except it used to recover from them much more often).
 
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