XMP

[Puffmac]

Hello,

So for those of your wondering why I'm posting in the wee hours of the morning... this overclocking business is thrilling stuff - reading, some videos, maybe an explosion or two if you're not careful!

But anyway I'm being extra cautious because I want to do this properly and don't want to break anything. Now. On the box of my Patriot Tri Channel 6GB RAM it says it should be running at 1600Mhz. However, The bios shows this as 1066. So upon further investigation and found a little feature called XMP. Now I'd like someone to clarify to me why they can't just have it running at 1600Mhz from the beginning and why I must go into the bios and effectively overclock this RAM to a speed it should already be achieving, via this XMP. Confusing.

If I enable this XMP profile is it considered overclocking and is it dangerous for the RAM. How will it affect my overall ability to overclock the processor (i7 920) and overall system speed.

Another quick question which may or may not belong here is when increasing voltages how much should I increase them by? .5? .05?

Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks,
Andrew.

 

[mmj_uk]

Core i7 doesn't officially support 1600Mhz memory which is why it is not detected as such, anything above 1333Mhz is considered overclocking.

Obviously running 1600Mhz will cause more stress on the CPU's integrated memory controller so it could reduce overall overclocking potential.