OCing won't work - P55M-GD45

Question

Hey, got my new P55M-GD45. Has a bunch of OCing features and has gotten many good reviews. Most every review I have read about it has mentioned that the board overclocked extremely easily and was very stable.
All I want is a very slight to modest OC. The first thing I want to do is at least get my DDR3 1600 to run @ 1600 speed. I know JDEC specs DDR3 up to 1333 and that you have to manually set it for most motherboards. So I try to do it the simple way and try setting the XMP profile. It shows the adjusted speed at 1600 and then I reboot. Doesn't work, have to clear CMOS to get anywhere again.
I have read of people using the EXACT same RAM as me and the EXACT same motherboard and they were able to set the XMP to "enable" and it automatically ran their RAM @ 1600 speed. The stock voltage is 1.5v and it's rated to run 1600 at 1.5v. Everything I read, people are running these stable at 1.5v at the rated 1600 speed.
I have tried messing with the Base Clock. I upped it to 160 (from 133) to have them run @ 1600 (I lowered the CPU multiplier so the CPU would still run at the stock speed of 2.9GHz). Doesn't work. Have to clear CMOS to get back to working condition.
I have disabled "Spread Spectrum" and the "Overdrive Protection" options in the BIOS because it says to in the manual if you plan on OCing. I have also done it with them on.
I don't get why this motherboard won't hold VERY slight and simple overclocks. Overclocks that aren't even really overclocks, just bringing up some RAM to run at the speed it is built to run at, and has run at for many other people on this board.
I am using BIOS v1.5 and Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I have read in a few places that BIOS v1.5 doesn't work well with OCing. But when I try to run BIOS v1.4, it won't boot with both sticks of RAM. It will boot with each stick separately so I know it's not the sticks (They both also passed hours of memtest). Would really like to use 1.4 and see if that let's me OC. Would be even better to get XMP to work with 1.5 though.
Thanks in advance if anyone has any tips. My build is in my signature.

Answer 1

Quote from: Jack t.N. on 12-February-10, 04:51:44
I doubt that.  What is the the model number of your memory?
1. The memory controller is inside the processor, not part of the board and according to Intel Specifications, it support up to DDR3-1333 memory modules only.
2.  The Chips used on your modules are built according to JEDEC Specifications but the ratings G.Skill advertises are most probably not. 
So basically you are overclocking both the memory controller/bus and the memory chips.  And that causes problems in many cases.
Here is a link to my memory on Newegg --> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231277
Going through the reviews, people mention the P55M-GD45 a few times and mention how easy it was to just set the XMP profile to enable for it to work as advertised. Now most of those people have an i5, I'm pretty sure I have seen this work in an i3 system though too. I have even seen people run this RAM at 1700+ with very minor volt increases. But for my purposes, 1.5v @ 1600 is very very possible with these and this board.
Of course, anything over 1333 is technically an overclock. But it's an extremely common and safe one that any board that supports minor OCing should accept with ease.
Quote
Anyway, can you post a screenshot of the CPU-Z "SPD" view and the "Memory" view?
The reason my RAM is running @ 642.5 MHz is because I tried OCing the Base Clock one after disabling "C-State" in the BIOS, since I read that helps with OCing somewhere, especially since the memory controller is on the CPU itself. Here's a pic of that...
It shows my Base Clock at 160, and that should have put my RAM to 1600 but it didn't. It's running my CPU OC'd to 3.2 from 2.9 though and every thing is smooth so far. Going to try XMP with the C-State turned off now.