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More Nehalem Info - Memory, Overclocking & Voltages

Natima

Natima

Natima

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Courtesy NordicHardware:
http://www.nordichardware.com/news,8118.html

Sorry if this has already been posted. Its a brand spanking new article.

We've posted information regarding Intel's Nehalem platform and its support for various DDR3 memory clock frequencies in the past. We've come across some more now, actually a lot more. As stated in the previous reports, the Nehalem platform will officially support only DDR3-800 and DDR3-1066, but there is still a strong buzz that there will be official support for DDR3-1333 memory, but it has not been decided yet.

There have been some confusion as to why Intel Core i7 would not support DDR3 memory clocked at higher frequencies and the first thing you need to be aware of is that it is not the frequency of the memory that is the culprit.

The problem is rather that the memory and the processor internals are fed synchronized voltages. Previous reports have stated that anything above 1.65V would fry a Nehalem processor and it would certainly be hard to get any of today's DDR3 memory modules to any kind of decent speeds at this voltage. But, these stories are exaggerated, but the fact remains that Nehalem processors are not going to like voltages above 1.7V.

You have to put it through some extreme handling for it to give up right away, but if you feed the memory with voltages above 1.8V, the processor could start degrading and finally cease to work. According to the information we've received you need to hit close to 2.0V to kill a Nehalem processor.
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well, not to bad...or is it just me being a n00b?

from what i've read processers go to max 1.5v, so you must be going for a pretty extreme overclock to use 2v :cool:
 
so... for a while overclocking will be out of the question? Or will some-one come up with a way of modifying the ram to have it's own voltages?
 
Meloco said:
so... for a while overclocking will be out of the question? Or will some-one come up with a way of modifying the ram to have it's own voltages?
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No extreme overclocking. Ocuk are already getting good overclocking results without hardly touching the voltage.

It just means you can't have super fast ram.
 
I dunno, Gibbo had his up to well over 900MHz I think, so probably you can set the RAM voltage to something different to the CPU, just that you'll potentially damage the memory controller on the CPU.

There was rumours of this occuring on A64s as well.
 
It ued to happen with A64s on the first spins of their silicon. I'm not at all surprised to hear it may well be the case with Nehalem.
 
mrthingyx said:
It ued to happen with A64s on the first spins of their silicon. I'm not at all surprised to hear it may well be the case with Nehalem.
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It did, but only if you were running BH5 at 3.3v+. When we started to get fast DDR that ran at 2.7v/2.9v (TCCD), the problem then went away. The same will happen with Nehalem i'm sure, it's only a matter of time before DDR3 voltages drop as well.
 
XeNoN89 said:
These seem like they are going to be a lot more hassle to OC than Core 2's
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From what I've seen they're still getting above 4Ghz with not too much trouble.
And I can only assume that they're not being pushed too far, as one of the samples I saw (at around 3.9) was from an intel employee, and the other (from an OcUK employee) at about 4.1Ghz.

I wouldnt expect either company to be pushing them as much as possible, but just enough to demonstrate their aproximate capabilities.
 
If it is the case that we can't run memory at high voltages, the big players will be sure to figure out how to make high-speed RAM run at low volts to meet the demand - I wouldn't worry about it!
 
First thing that hits me when reading that, is why? Why can't they just use seperate voltage controls like on current boards?

Admittadly I know near nothing about this, but surely a company like Intel can make that happen?
 
I don't understand what the memory voltage has to do with the processor voltage? It's not like the memory sticks are being powered by vCore as they have their own voltage still? just that the memory controller is getting moved onto the CPU? :confused:
 
I'm still a bit unsure about this. The RAM is a completely different physical entity to the processor, so really it needs its own power supply anyway. Even if somehow Intel did somehow manage to force the voltages to be synchronised for the RAM, surely it should be possible to 'trick' the processor/chipset into thinking the voltages are synchronised whilst in reality forcing the RAM to a seperate voltage?

Edit: I suppose the one reason I could think of as to why Intel might do that is to lower manufacturing costs for the boards - layers cost, and triple-channel DDR3 increased the complexity of the boards all by itself. It could just be that because RAM and CPU voltages are so close by DDR3's standards they might as well cut some corners by somehow making the CPU memory controller 'in charge', as it were, of the memory voltages.
 
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I think it's more to do with the RAM operating at say 2V which is then interfaced directly to the memory controller on the CPU so there's no NB in between to do any signal conversion, so the CPU is exposed to that voltage. In a NB set up the NB converts the signal from the RAM to put it onto the FSB at the FSB voltage as far as I'm aware.
 
So am I correct in thinking that much of the current crop of DDR3 ram will be useless when i7 comes out? Looking on OCUK it appears that most of the DDR3 sticks need at least 1.7v. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?
 
Jokester said:
I dunno, Gibbo had his up to well over 900MHz I think, so probably you can set the RAM voltage to something different to the CPU, just that you'll potentially damage the memory controller on the CPU.

There was rumours of this occuring on A64s as well.
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but motherboard manufacturers will make decent mobo's that wouldnt damage anything?
 
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