720 X3 -790GX-G65 and DDR 1600 ?

Question

Hi all ,    New MSI customer here .
  Ok ,So I got me a 790GX-G65 motherboard for cheap from Newegg on a "open box" deal $89.99 . Also got a 4870 1gb "open box" tooo for $129.99 and 4gb OCZ DDR1600 "new retail" for $65.99 (see signiture for model #'s) for a sweet upgrade from my BIOSTAR A770 A2+ motherboard with a 5000+ Black Edition along with 2x1gb Super Talent DDR800 and 3870 512mb .
 The 790GX-G65 was still in anti-static bag un-opened and all accessories were there ,only the sticker seal on the box was opened (lucky me) . I used My Power suppy and other goodies like , case , DVD and CD drives from my previous build and could'nt be happier about the performance boost I got for the $$$ spend !
  Ok, now that I've tried to give you a little background on the build here's is my issue or question (whichever you prefer) :
      I cannot get my memory to run at 1600 regardless of what I do  , I could'nt even run 1333mhz stable until I flashed to latest BIOS 1.3 ( board came with 1.1 ) @1333 RiG would run just fine booting up and up to desktop any type of stress at all like multi tasking it would get "flakey" and start pausing and jumping and gaming was out of the question, as the Video driver ( 9.4 BTW )would crash as soon as 3D started . After flashing to 1.3 bios all is well at 1333 and stable in Prime for hours on end with no errors. Games run well tooo ( Crysis all "very high" settings with 8xAA and 16xAF via CCC , smooth as silk @ 1280X1024 in Windows 7 RC ) .
    This is what I've tried so far to get RAM up to 1600mhz with no avail . BTW running in Dimms 3+4 (the two furthest from CPU socket)at the moment !
1) changed fsb/dram ratio to 1.4 ............no luck !   
2) raised dram voltage all the way up to 1.92 ! ........no luck !   
3) set timings to OCZ's specs of 8-8-8-24 (and even set all timings to slowest BIOS would allow)..... no luck !   
4) tried lowering HT and NB ratios along with CPU multiplier and raising FSB using 1.2 and 1.3.3 memory dividers to get ram up to 1600 without overclocking the CPU ......... no luck !   
5) about every combination of 1-4
and a few other things tooooo , can't remember every tweak I've tried !
  I get a post loop that will go on forever and never show anything on the screen when RAM is in dimms 3-4 , and using Dimms 1-2 I make it up to the initializing USB devices ,then get Cmos checksum error, which upon enter BIOS menu it has changed everything to "optimized defaults" without any input from me      !
  I'm alittle lost as to what to try next ,but I'd sure like to try to get the RAM up to 1600mhz instead of 1333mhz ,regardless of , the performance difference ( I read the post about AMD 1333 vs 1600 performance BTW )
 Since the memory is rated to run at that speed ,I'd atleast like to see it run that speed if nothing else .
  I don't think Power is a problem as I can overclock the 720 x3 up to 3.8 with just changing the multi to 19x and stable at stock voltage ( ********  ) ,even though 3.9 seems to be the wall with this ( 906 ) CPU ,that I have as no amount of volts will get me over that 
 Like I said earlier NEW MSI Customer ,,have played with a few older MSI boards ,but they were much older and other folks . This is the first MSI purchase made by myself , so far I 'm liking what I see 
     Any suggestions ?????     Or am I overlooking the Obvious ??
                          Thanks in advance ,for any replys!

Answer 1

Quote from: Fredrik on 20-May-09, 04:43:58
Do not have this board myself, but it may have to do with the memory used.  OCZ memory's name says it all:
" Special Ops Urban Elite "   
Much prefer Corsair, and have ever since dear Richard helped me out a thousand years ago.
  I've owned just about every brand of memory ( or installed on clients machines ) available to the mainsteam public from retail sellers , I like Corsair toooo ,but was budget building on this build for myself and have used OCZ memory on a few builds for customers and never had any problems whatsoever with their memory .
  The main reason I went with this choice on the memory was #1 price verses timings and speed compared to Corsair or Kingston Hyper X ,, Corsair was high dollar and timings were alittle slow in the price range I was looking for ,,,Kingstons timings were slowwwwww and voltage requirements were toooo high for my taste .
  From what I've seen , the only difference in these modules compared to OCZ's Gold edition is the heat spreader ,,timings seem to be the same . So I don't believe "Special Ops Urban Elite " means anything other than other than the color of the heat spreader used on it,,which I really could'nt care less about !
     Thanks for the input ,,, any and all comments or suggestions are appreciated !