GA 890fxa UD5 memory

[CoolDude64]

Hi guys,

Just a quickie, I am building  new system and will be using 2 x 4GB memory sticks in dual channel, one in position1 and the other in position 3.
I am slightly confused in the manual as to how to set up dual channel. Do I set it up in the bios as ganged or unganged? The manual says
Ganged is for single dual channel, which is it single or dual?
Thanks in antisipation,

David

[absic]

Hi there David,

Channels 1 & 3 will mean your RAM is running in Dual Channel Mode. Ignore the Manual, it is better if you set this to Unganged in BIOS.

[CoolDude64]

Thanks a lot absic, I would have probably gone for ganged, thank you for the advice, I shall set it to unganged now in the bios.

David

[absic]

No problem. You don't actually say what CPU you are using but Unganged is the safest way to go with the AM3's .

[CoolDude64]

Sorry absic, I will be using a phenom ii x6 3.2GHz.

I have another question.
I will be installing windows 7 64 bit and would like to set all my drives to ahci, this includes the gigabyte sata 2 drives. When installing W7 do I still need a floppy drive to load the drivers on install (F6) or could I put the drivers on a flash drive and get
W7 to recognise this? On XP I had to use a floppy.

Thanks,

David

[absic]

You can use a USB stick for installing the AHCI drivers and I would suggest disabling the Floppy Drive feature in BIOS if you're not going to use it.

Is there any special reason for setting up for AHCI?

[CoolDude64]

Hi absic, the only reason for choosing ahci was to be able to hot swap out a drive if it fails or if I wanted to use a higher capacity drive at a later date.without powering down the system.
I had not bought a new floppy drive this time, I thought I might have to take out the one in my present system and use that to put the drivers on but as you have said I should disable the floppy drive if I am not going to use it.
Thanks for the advice about being able to use a flash drive instead.

David

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I think the day of the floppy drive has final come to an end. The ubiquitous USB drive reigns now.

[autotech]

Running in unganged gives more stable performance and higher overclocks.  Ganged cause driver recovery with ati cards and some blue screens once in a while with lower clocks.