GA-770TA-UD3 - 1333 or 1600?

[schrock]

I am confused, for the GA-770TA-UD3 MOBO what memory should I get 1333 or 1666? Gigabyte's website says:
"Support for DDR3 1866(OC)(Note 2)/1333/1066 MHz memory modules"
indicating no support for 1666 or that it is OC, and the actual manual for this MOBO says:
Support for DDR3 1800 (O.C.)/1666/1333/1066 MHz memory modules

So will 1666 work out of the box without tweaking and overclocking?

Sources:
http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ProductID=3284
http://america.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-770ta-ud3_e.pdf

Thanks for any help.

[absic]

Hi there, to be honest the issue with memory and memory speeds that work out-of-the-box is a little confusing and it has become more so with the memory controller now actually on the Phenom II CPU.

Whilst the motherboards will support the faster speeds, to actually obtain them needs some tweaking and in recent builds I have opted to go for 1333 mhz memory, which runs without any issues.

I lifted the following quote from a review at Tom's Hardware regarding this:
While DDR3-1600 operating under tight timings will undoubtedly give you the best performance, and DDR3 below 1066 should not be used for the sake of performance, the best compromise clearly is DDR3-1333 at reasonable timings. In most benchmarks, the difference between 1600 and 1333 speeds is negligible, but 1333 would still give you a larger benefit than the tiny gap between 1333 and 1600. In addition, DDR3-1333 is about to become the performance mainstream level, meaning acceptable prices for low-latency memory kits.

The full article can be found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-ddr3,2319-8.html and it is worth reading as it demonstrates the gains of slightly increasing the CPU speed over buying faster memory. Another excerpt towards the end of the article says: that a processor speed bump can actually do much more than any upgrade in memory speed

Hope this helps

[schrock]

Hi there, to be honest the issue with memory and memory speeds that work out-of-the-box is a little confusing and it has become more so with the memory controller now actually on the Phenom II CPU.

Whilst the motherboards will support the faster speeds, to actually obtain them needs some tweaking and in recent builds I have opted to go for 1333 mhz memory, which runs without any issues.

I lifted the following quote from a review at Tom's Hardware regarding this:
While DDR3-1600 operating under tight timings will undoubtedly give you the best performance, and DDR3 below 1066 should not be used for the sake of performance, the best compromise clearly is DDR3-1333 at reasonable timings. In most benchmarks, the difference between 1600 and 1333 speeds is negligible, but 1333 would still give you a larger benefit than the tiny gap between 1333 and 1600. In addition, DDR3-1333 is about to become the performance mainstream level, meaning acceptable prices for low-latency memory kits.

The full article can be found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-ii-ddr3,2319-8.html and it is worth reading as it demonstrates the gains of slightly increasing the CPU speed over buying faster memory. Another excerpt towards the end of the article says: that a processor speed bump can actually do much more than any upgrade in memory speed

Hope this helps

Thanks for your input absic115 much appreciated. Yes this whole AMD memory thing has been very confusing and time consuming. I had also read that Tom's Hardware article before posting my question. Wikipedia say that the denab core's memory controller stock speed is 1333. Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenom_II .  However the memory support list for this particular MOBO found here http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/MemorySupport/mb_memory_ga-770ta-ud3.pdf shows the 1666 memory running as stock speed. So from what I can gather the motherboard will handle 1666 memory as stock but the phenom processor stock supported speed is 1333. Thus I am limited by the processor not the motherboard. Maybe someone can verify that this statement is correct?

[absic]

Whilst you are, to some extent, limited by the CPU, you can still achieve the rated speeds for your memory but, you have to manually set things up rather than have it "straight out of the box", which is due to the CPU not motherboard.

But, as the article in Tom's Hardware review says the gains between 1333Mhz RAM and 1600 Mhz RAM  are actually negligable and a slight bump to the CPU speed will give you a better solution.

[thx1138]

Does the processor have to be overclocked in order to run the memory at full speed? I get inconsistent errors in Memtest86+ when I run my memory at 1600 MHz / 11-11-11-24 and more frequent errors at 1600 MHz / 8-8-8-24. I would have bought 1333 MHz memory if I'd known, but now I've bought this memory. I could of course return it, if I can verify that it's faulty (and not my processor or northbridge - could my northbridge have any role in producing these errors?)

[absic]

Hi there, no you shouldn't need to overclock the CPU to get the system to run at 1600Mhz.

Have you re-set the memory clock in the MIT section of BIOS? It took me a while to figure this one out but if you change this setting to manual you can then tell the CPU that you are using 1600 mhz memory (If I remember correctly it needs to change from the default setting of x6.66).

You should then be able to run at the specified speeds for your memory. (Don't forget to alter the voltage for your memory, my Corsair memory needs 1.65v instead of the default 1.5v which then gives me an overclock warning in BIOS which I just ignore!)