Core i7 Supported memory question

[SuperChunkster™]

I am about to build a new i7 pc and I read today that the official supported memory was
DDR3 800 and 1066. I purchased DDR3 1600, will it run at 1600 with the i7 at its stock speeds or do I need to overclock to make it run at 1600?

 

[human_error]

I am about to build a new i7 pc and I read today that the official supported memory was
DDR3 800 and 1066. I purchased DDR3 1600, will it run at 1600 with the i7 at its stock speeds or do I need to overclock to make it run at 1600?

What motherboard will you be using (or thinking of using)? Some of the i7 boards allow you to run the ram at 1600 without ocing i believe (?).

 

[ap4lifetn]

most of them will allow it to run at 1600 at stock speeds, the retail chips have unlocked memory multipliers

 

[SuperChunkster™]

I will be getting the ASUS p6t deluxe, it says it supports up to 1600 (oc) but will the stock CPU be holding the memory back?

 

[erocker]

No, becuase even though you will have to raise the FSB, you can always lower the multi on the processor.

 

[SuperChunkster™]

No, becuase even though you will have to raise the FSB, you can always lower the multi on the processor.

I don't quite understand, sorry. will i have to make any changes to make it run at 1600?

 

[dark2099]

If you haven't purchased the board yet, I wouldn't recommend it. I had one of them and was very disappointed in it. I replaced it with a P6T6 WS Revolution, which is much better, but a bit more. The Gigabyte GA EX58-UD5 is the same price as the P6T Deluxe and is pretty much the same as the Extreme minus a nice heatsink, and I have seen some good results with the Extreme. Concerning your question, if your RAM has what is called Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) then there will be an option in the BIOS to run the ram at that speed, and all you will have to do is enable it and things should work fine.

 

[human_error]

If you haven't purchased the board yet, I wouldn't recommend it. I had one of them and was very disappointed in it. I replaced it with a P6T6 WS Revolution, which is much better, but a bit more. The Gigabyte GA EX58-UD5 is the same price as the P6T Deluxe and is pretty much the same as the Extreme minus a nice heatsink, and I have seen some good results with the Extreme. Concerning your question, if your RAM has what is called Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) then there will be an option in the BIOS to run the ram at that speed, and all you will have to do is enable it and things should work fine.

I'm quite happy with my P6T deluxe, and i believe there is a bios option without xmp which allows you to tell the ram to run at 1600.

And on the stock cpu holding the memory back even with my 1333mhz memory (now ocd to 1500) i have more memory bandwidth than my computer knows to handle (in triple channel).

**edit to avoid post spamming the thread**

There is, that is just the easy way because it automatically sets the timings and voltage for the ram while leaving the CPU at stock, can be used at other speeds as well.

There is that yes, but if the ram is under intel spec and only needs 1.5-1.65v i'd have thought the board would have set the voltage accordingly(?), although the timings may well be wrong so XMP ram would be better but not necissary.

 

[dark2099]

There is, that is just the easy way because it automatically sets the timings and voltage for the ram while leaving the CPU at stock, can be used at other speeds as well.

 

[SuperChunkster™]

So the 920 will be able to fully utilize the 1600 DDR3 even though it is not officially supported?