Overclocking Memory on x58: x5670 / Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600

[OpenSourcePirate]

Hi, I'm having some issues getting my system(s) to post and hold the settings set in bios for memory "overclocks". (But we are talking very modest overclocks here.) The systems appear to boot fine, the settings are just not applied.

The background to this is that I have had 2 x58 systems lying around for a while. I used one as a desktop PC and the other as a number cruncher occasionally. I recently "upgraded" the memory in my desktop system from some 1866 MHz Kingston kit (24GB - 6x 4GB modules) to some brand new Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz kit (48 GB - 6x 8GB modules).

One of these systems had an i7 920 in it (a long time ago). I had that CPU since launch about a decade ago. The motherboards I bought about 5 years ago to replace an Asus board which had some memory channel faults. (RAM only worked in 2 slots or something.)

I then bought an x5670 (Intel Xeon) CPU some time ago to use in it. Then more recently, I swapped this out for an x5675 and transferred the x5670 to what I believe is an identical Gigabyte board.

So basically I have two systems, they are very similar.

I am pretty sure in saying that I have never seen either of these boot up with any memory speed higher than 1333 MHz, since I started using Xeons.

And this is how I arrive at my problem. I needed to run some analysis jobs which I believe are memory bandwidth bottlenecked. So ideally I would like to get the system to post at those higher RAM speeds. I don't care about pushing the speed crazy high, not even above the rated speeds, but it would be nice to at least obtain those speeds.

None of the XMP profiles seem to have any effect by the way. When building the systems, I enabled XMP, noticed it didn't seem to do anything, and then just gave up trying with it.

I tried a few things this morning. I started off setting the BCLK to 133 manual. Rebooted, this didn't help. Then changed memory SPD to 12x, which should be 1600. No change on reboot. Set QPI to x48 (6.4GHZ) uncore to x24 (3200 MHZ). Btw: XMP disabled during all of this. Under memory settings, timings are all default 9-9-9-24, and performance enhance is default/standard. No changes to voltages.

Any recommendations? Checking Intels product page for x5675 memory speeds are rated up to 1333, but nothing is specified beyond this. My guess is either the CPU has some microcode which prevents overclocking the memory controller... somehow?

The CPU multiplier is "set to x23", but the frequency governor (Linux) scales it up to x25 under heavy load. (3.33GHZ core)

It's very weird. If I change BCLK to 140, system posts, and states it is running at 3.5GHZ. This is a base frequency of 3.220.

 

[Tylersburg]

Did you ever get it figured out? I’ve been a long time Tylersburg user of each i5520 & X58. I tested various CPU’s to find it’s probably a Xeon thing. I have a W3680, X5690 & X5675, all act the same. I also have i7-980X & i7-930 of which lock in the 10x ram multi for 1600 but not 1866 until u go manually. The 930 was quite an OC’r for its day. 4.2g+ is a snap on air to bclk 200x ddr 2000. That X5675 is awesome on air in auto to 166x bringing ram to 1600 on its 8x ratio. I forgot if how I got anything on 10x ram. It hits 4.5g like pie but still only in 8x ram. Best I got was 220x BCLK for 1766 ram. I can only get ddr1866/2000 on i7 cores. So in this case a good solid motherboard is needed to take that high fsb. I use ASUS Rampage III Extreme, P6X58-E WS if this helps .Most good workstation boards can handle the power and long use.