What RAM voltage is safe for DDR3 on AM3 boards

[Bladesinger7x]

What are save voltages for DDR3 ram when used with (true) AM3 boards?

For example ...GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P ram slots have imprint 1.5
...is 1.5v maximum voltage for this board or can the voltage be higher
than 1.5v.

I know that Nehalem boards recommend only memory with up to 1.6v

[Hemi345]

The Corsair TW3X2G1333C9DHX is on Gigabyte's compatibility list 1.7V @ 1333mhz so I figured I'd probably be okay with the TW3X4G1333C9DHX needing 1.8V @ 1600mhz (what I am now running it at).

IIRC, the options in the BIOS offer up to 2.35V

[informal]

What are save voltages for DDR3 ram when used with (true) AM3 boards?

For example ...GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P ram slots have imprint 1.5
...is 1.5v maximum voltage for this board or can the voltage be higher
than 1.5v.

I know that Nehalem boards recommend only memory with up to 1.6v

It(the phenom II + board combo) definitely can go higher than 1.6V ,but you should aim at lower volts when choosing your RAM. Reasons are obvious: lower temps,less stress on IMC(which resides in the CPU;AMD's Phenom II does not have the 1.6V recommended limit as i7 though),less power draw,good starting point for further ram OCing since lower default volts/high frequency RAM means chips can scale even more in terms of frequency etc.

[naokaji]

I've pushed up to 2,3V through the ram and ram, mobo and cpu are still alive, but it's certainly nothing I would recommend for 24/7 usage.

[Oberon]

My line of thinking on the matter is that, considering this IMC can also handle DDR2 memory that requires a significantly higher voltage than DDR3 that you certainly shouldn't run into the same sort of problems that the i7s have.

Then again, it's not exactly the same silicon managing DDR2 and DDR3, but it should share at least some transisitors, right?

[EniGmA1987]

Isnt DDR3 spec 1.5? OR somewhere close... So thats probably why the 1.5 is there. I bet you can easily use the older DDR3 that everyone was using before i7, that stuff ran fine even up at 2v.

[BrowncoatGR]

Then again, it's not exactly the same silicon managing DDR2 and DDR3, but it should share at least some transisitors, right?

Actually it is the same silicon afaik.

[informal]

It's the same memory controller(not 2 separate ones that control memory access with DDR2 or DDR3).

[Oberon]

Right, I'm not trying to imply that AMD wasted die space including two separate controllers, I'm just saying that there's probably some silicon that's not necessarily being used when using DDR2 or DDR3 (similar to the way the extra registers in a 64-bit CPU would go unused while running 32-bit software), but that most of it must obviously be shared and would therefore be tolerant of even the higher DDR2 voltages.