Geil DDR2 6400 Voltage on Gigabyte DS3

Black Dog · 21 Mar 2007 at 22:10

I have the gigabyte DS3 version 3.3 and want to know the voltage settings.

I've heard that it defaults to 1.9v but Geil recommend 2.1v. I have not changed the voltage settings yet and everything seems to be running fine @ 4-4-4-12.

Should I up the voltage +0.3v?

I don't know if Gigabyte has updated the voltage with the new version of the board or not and cannot find the actual voltage in the bios.

Cheers.

BEn_2600+ · 22 Mar 2007 at 17:36

Try pressing Ctrl+F1 when in the BIOS screen this should open hidden options for the voltage etc. I dunno about the 3.3 but the older revisions default to 1.8v, I think

Ben

Cob · 22 Mar 2007 at 17:39

Yip 1.8v is the standard DDR2 default voltage.

Even if appears stable at 1.8v, i would knock it upto +2 atleast.

Black Dog · 23 Mar 2007 at 09:58

okay but what would upping the voltage do, any increase in performance?

Cheers.

stoofa · 23 Mar 2007 at 10:40

Performance no, not really.
The modules basically use "Safe Mode SPD" which means they default to 1.8v
This caused a lot of problems in the beginning with DS3 and DS4 motherboards refusing to boot-up because the memory really needed more than the 1.8v they were being fed.
Give them a .3v to the recommended 2.1v just means they are getting the volts they want.
It should just improve overall stability of your system.
Even if you've not experienced any stability issues it won't do them any harm to have them running at the increased voltage.

Darg · 23 Mar 2007 at 13:48

Set them to +0.3 voltage and manually set the timings to 4-4-4-12 @ 800mhz as sometimes the SPDs get read wrong. This seems to happen a bit with the Geil RAM.

VeNT · 23 Mar 2007 at 20:46

I set mine to +0.4 and got over 900 out of em

Black Dog · 23 Mar 2007 at 21:43

okay cheers.

I'm not planning on overclocking so I suppose I'll leave it as it is on 1.8v.

I have the memory set on manual @ 4-4-4-12.

cpu-z is reading 4-4-4-12.

Thanks.

ns400r · 23 Mar 2007 at 22:21

Darg said:
Set them to +0.3 voltage and manually set the timings to 4-4-4-12 @ 800mhz as sometimes the SPDs get read wrong. This seems to happen a bit with the Geil RAM.

The SPD isn't read wrongly, it's set that way to ensure a higher compatability with motherboards when running at 1.8v (see next line).
Also, the default voltage of 1.8v isn't set by the memory but by the motherboards.