Recommended settings for GA-870A-UD3?

[batphantom]

I've been trying to get my system tweaked for a while now, but I thought I'd check in here to see what people recommend for BIOS settings for a few things. First off, my hard drives are all SATA, should i tell the BIOS to ignore IDE and force SATA? Does this make a difference in performance? Second, overclocking. When I use the EasyTune software, I can't seem to get any kind of stable o/c. Will I get better performance from using the BIOS settings manually? What should I be adjusting? Can I leave the RAM settings alone, or do they need to be tweaked along with the CPU? I've successfully unlocked the fourth core on the CPU.

Sorry, I know that's a lot, but the system's been really bugging me. I just replaced 4 GB of 1600 OCZ ram with 8 GB of 1333 Kinsgston Value in hopes of gaining stability, but it still locks up using EasyTune.

Athlon II x3 440, 2x4GB Kingston Value KVR1333D3N9K2/8G, 650W PSU, GeForce 460 768MB.

[absic]

Hi there,

Personally I don't like using EasyTune6 and I would recommend that you actually make any changes for overclocking from within BIOS.

Configuration of HDD's and other devices in BIOS can be a little complicated and it is actually best to decide how you are going to set things up prior to installing your OS as making changes afterwards can be a little tricky and cause problems.

If you are running a single HDD as your BOOT Disk and then 1 or more as Storage drives then I would probably set the SATA controller to AHCI as this does offer a very slight improvement over Native IDE mode. If you have already installed your OS in Native IDE Mode then you can't just change this setting in BIOS and, depending on your OS, it is often easier to plan on a re-install and starting again.

Your DVD/CD Drive(s) would be better attached to the GSATA2 port(s) and have this controller set to Native IDE Mode as most DVD/CD drives do not like AHCI Mode.

Your current system instability could be due to the unlocked fourth core on your CPU and my best advice, for now, is to get your system back to a stable condition and once it is running properly again, then start to tweak.

[batphantom]

Thanks, I'll try some of those settings. I agree that the fourth core could be causing problems, I just assumed that if it unlocked, it was fine. For gaming, I'd rather have three overclocked cores than four stock. For overclocking on this board, what's the best approach in terms of what I should be increasing first?