GA-EG41MF-US2H - can I operate the memory/FSB at 1066M?

[bb193]

I'm such a newbie, I'm not even sure I'm talking about overclocking here - please be gentle with me  

My F-S Scaleo P blew its Gigabyte motherboard, and I thought I was being adventurous in buying a replacement. I went for this one becaue it was a Gigabyte too and it was the same size, so I could reasonably hope the screws were in the same place for the case! I also had a spare 775 cpu that I could use. The other reason was it was cheap - I have very little money for this.

I slammed in an Intel Pentium D820 CPU I had lying around and 2Gb of 533M DDR2memory I had. It gave me some reliability problems, which I thought might be related to the fact that the MB isn't supposed to support 533 memory. So I bought this PC2-8500 memory (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000HWZJYS/ref=oss_product), which runs at 1066M (2.2V) and 800M (1.8V). By the time it arrived, I had found that the reliability problems were down to incompatibilities between MCE2005 and .net framework 4, which I had uninstalled, and the PC was running great.

I put the faster memory in, and got something like a 30% improvement in Everest home edition benchmarks. However, the FSB and memory are running at 800M not 1066. I just wondered if there was any way I could get them running at 1066, as the memory says it can run at that and the Motherboard says it can too, and it will support 1066 memory if overclocked (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3280#sp).

I just don't really know if or how to do that with this board?

Or am I limited by the fact that the processor I'm using  says it only suppoprts an 800M FSB? Is that what is limiting me?

Or should I just be happy with the 30% improvement I got going from 533 to 800? This is a media center PC, so I don't really want to end up with lots of fan noise, when I overheat the CPU.

Apologies again for this being such a newbie question. Any comments to help me understand if I can do this would be very gratefully received.

[Dark Mantis]

Hello and welcome to the forum. You have done quite well getting as far as you did without really much knowledge, so congratulations!Personally in your situation where you don't have a lot of cash to spare I would say be happy with what you have already got and don't try overclocking at the moment. Things can and do go wrong and it can mean a bricked system if you are unlucky. Accept your 30% increase and learn about your system and how it works  and then when you are ready you can have a play.

[bb193]

Many thanks for your reply - and for being so gentle with such a beginner 

The confirmation that I'm not just missing a simple BIOS setting that would give me the benefit of 1066 without any risk is very useful.

It is a bit frustrating that the MB and the memory both say they support 1066. But then I guess that is what overclocking is about - there is always something that is providing the bottleneck, and that has to be pushed to the limit to get the best result.

If I understrand this right, the only thing I could do is edge up the speed of the FSB, from 800. And the memory would probably need to be edged up closer to the 2.2V that the spec says, and the processor would also increase its speed in line with the FSB. So this would all take more power, so the fans would go and eventually, I might get a more unreliable PC and even fry the PC I have.

Or see if I can get my hands on a 775 process with a faster FSB.

Nope - I can't really fault your advice. Anyway I look at it, it looks good.

[Dark Mantis]

You're welcome and keep checking into the forum to learn as you go.  To be honest the speed increase wouldn't actually be that much anyway and it will just increase the heat.