Quote Originally Posted by Dynacore View Post
Ok right now put it at 8x460 with my memory @ 1105Mhz 5-5-5-15. Static read enabled, clock twister moderate, PL 9. Running Windows mem test for stability, hope it holds.
Would it be a big help to switch to bios 0803? I'm still on 0410.

Edit:
Ok seems to be stable, of course no big OC but all bits help. Wouldnt 1200Mhz be possible with this mem and lower timings? Can't find any results.
Take a look at Everest Cache Latency & BW at PL9, this should put memory read bandwidth around 5-700mb/s slower than memory write bandwidth correct?

If so you can safely tighten down to PL8, which should close the gap to 2-400mb/sec, and probably not require any additional Vnb, or if so very little. PL7 at that FSB will need too much more Vnb, and too tight of a PL sucks for everyday usage anyway. Stability changes with the weather. One day its too warm and the thing crashes randomly, then you get a cool day and it runs perfect.

Not worth the hassle IMO, it's great for benching but other than that for my every day usage I normally use the next PL lower than the one that gives roughly equal Memory Read and Write bandwidth, which at 460FSB will be PL8. PL7 will give roughly equal read/write, and require a good 0.05-0.10v more on Vnb for consistent stability.

Now personally I've run PL7 at 481FSB on this board, but I was using near 1.53v Vnb and even with this much, sometimes from boot to boot it would be hit and miss. No amount of voltage or fine tuning can fix this period. I ended up dropping down to PL8 because I could run it at 1.47v without it missing a beat. Mind you it would post and even pass stress tests at 1.41v without ever getting an error, but when it came down to real world usage such as long gaming sessions or 24/7 uptime, i needed that extra 0.06v or so to keep the thing from BSOD'ing, leaking memory or just plain old crashing apps randomly. Was it worth the extra 300mb/sec read bandwidth to have it crash after 2 hours of gaming or in the middle of watching a movie, absolutely not. If anything my system actually responded much better from loading up windows, to opening or closing apps, with a slacker Performance Level. PL9 was a bit too slack, and made things no better than PL7.

So to sum it up, don't listen to these clowns when they say a tight PL is the way to go, because they also are the same ones saying they get errors in prime or linpack on settings that were previously stable, and the same ones who won't accept that settings or voltages are too tight or too low to be the problem

Just find the Performance Level that gives you both responsiveness and stability. Try PL9 and PL8, and test both stressing and everyday usage, take note of how windows boots up, time to display icons, load apps, etc. See which of the two suits your settings.