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Overclocked Memory Breaks Core i7 CPUs
arcticstoat writes "Overclockers looking to bolster their new Nehalem CPUs with overclocked memory may be disappointed. Intel is telling motherboard manufacturers not to encourage people to push the voltage of their DIMMs beyond 1.65V, as anything higher could damage the CPU. This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."
They deserve busted components. If you push the limits of a device, you deserve what you get. Maybe good and cool, maybe broken shit.
This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings."
I'll just stick to the mathematics of quantum field theory. Kids these days and their crazy machines!
When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped...
Warning, pushing your components beyond their ratings may damage them!
Wow, never knew that overclocking might be problematic, guess I shouldn't have ignored all those warnings by the manufacturer, the system bios, the warranty pamphlets, the packaging....
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Since when has a manufacturer said "Yes, over-volt the shit out of our part, it will be fine."
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I thought intel was starting to encourage overclocking and the like. This is definitely a step in the wrong direction. Manufactures that side step this will increase sales. I will never buy a mobo that limits dimm voltage that low.
I understand the mindset, obligatory car analogy here, but it is not something I've ever done. Shopping for hardware has become a bit of a mine field lately, as most of the top tier motherboard and RAM manufacturers offer a *ton* of options for boosting the juice to various things all over the motherboard. They advertise this as a feature. I'm glad for those folks who like to go faster. It does make things a bit tricky having to check the RAM voltage, against what the motherboard can handle, and the processor will take, and hoping it all works. I'd like it if Asus and Gigabyte could maybe come up with a 'Get off my lawn!' series for us folks who like stock voltages, and wear onions on our belts.
Have you ever tried booting some of this memory with the default timings on a motherboard to find it will not boot with overvolting? I bought 8gb of OCZ memory this summer and could not get my system to boot till I took out some other memory from a Dell my company gave me and overvolted that memory in BIOS to 1.7 and than swapped in the 8gb OCZ. I should not have to do that, doesn't the memory specify what voltage it needs to run at; and if not, why not?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
For most application the quantity of memory is more important than the speed of the memory. As I said "most"... I know my usage patterns are fine with completely normal memory.
Overclocking? Not bothered with since the early Celeron days...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Considering that so many memory modules require running out of spec voltages to operate properly, while the Intel CPU requires voltages within spec, it would appear to me that the memory makers are turning out bad memory.
Maybe instead of requiring users ramp voltages up to CPU damaging levels, they should fix their chips? Now that Intel has brought the memory controller into the CPU, that they have tighter tolerances for the voltages does not surprise me.
Granted, I do a bit of overclocking of my video card, and the processor, but I never screw with voltages. NEVER screw with voltages. That silicon has a tolerance range, but I've learned over the years that playing with voltage (Cyrix M-II processor, anyone?) is generally a bad idea.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I suppose this is a downside(although not a terribly upsetting one) of Intel's move to an on-die memory controller. Typically, CPUs are moved onto smaller and lower voltage processes more aggressively than are the northbridge and southbridge. It looks as though, in this case, that means that the CPU will impose substantially lower voltage limits on RAM than the northbridge used to.
Given the boost that on-die memory controllers gave to AMD, back when they adopted them, I suspect that the tradeoff will still be worth it. On the other hand, I strongly suspect that there are going to be some very unhappy cries of "WTF! How could RAM voltage kill my CPU?" from adventuresome kiddies unfamiliar with the implications of this change. Warning stickers aren't going to deter them.
Nelphlem cores come standard with, ta da! overclocking built in. They don't have a step down (well they might) technology, but step up. They overclock themselves. So if you try and overclock a cpu made to overclock automatically something tells me that you'll run into problems, like the cpu overclocking itself too much too fast, and over volting itself.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but don't worry. Intel is right on it releasing numbers like the new core is 50% faster in games! Exactly what are they comparing it to and are they comparing it at it's default clock speed or automatically overclocked setting?
Either way, those overclocking kids trying to get high numbers/benchmarks are going to burn a whole lot of these out very easily.
"This will come as a blow to owners of enthusiast memory, such as Corsair's 2.133MHz DDR3 Dominator RAM, which needs 2V to run at its full speed with 9-9-9-24 timings." I think some one forgot to proof read. Either that or manufacturers are REALLY pushing the data width technology as opposed to clock speed...
What is that, Commodore 64 RAM?
...mmm, onions...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
... until somebody solders a crapload of diodes to their motherboard to drop each ram output line voltage by .7v.
Bonus points if they're LEDs.
When part manufacturers design and specify their parts they will often be very conservative. This gives them some room for process variance, changed materials, etc. Thus, one batch might work fine at high voltages and some will not. Or current parts will work but some future parts will not.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Intel can't do split volts on the cpu and ram like amd boards and older Intel boards can do??
Will any other stuff like this show up in QPI 2+ systems with the QPI bus?
I was under the impression that the voltage for the CPU was set independently from the RAM, so I'm not seeing why the RAM voltage should affect the CPU. If it does then that is a design flaw, in my opinion.
9-9-9-24 timings are "dominator" good? I thought 2-2-2-6 was good, with 5s being average and common. 9-9-9-24 sounds horrible in comparison.
Not that I care, I'm just confused.
They deserve to live with their results, be those increased performance or broken components. Saying they deserve busted components is like saying someone who soups up their car deserves a blown motor. Both endeavors, done correctly, can boost the performance of the tool in question. It's not hurting anyone, so why the sour grapes? Never were quite able to get the CPU overclocked so you want everyone who tries to fail?
Says Intel, dipshit.
This is old news, by the way.
That means DDR3-1600 is the max speed as a standard.
Anything faster than DDR3-1600 is already an overclocked memory by the memory manafacture.
However, Nehalem supports up to DDR3-1333 only.
As a hardware enthusiast (but not an overclocker), I would rather be using a DDR3-1600 memory.
Understandably, the overclocking community would want to use DDR3-2000 or faster (if any).
Personally, I would not be buying Nehalem until a newer one comes out
with at least DDR3-1600 or faster support.
"metaphysical"
"This issue is a material physics problem, not a 'CPU' problem."
That must be because for a minute few minutes i was wondering whether there is an analog in the form of overclocking the human brain (other than quickly and multiply/furiously bashing one with a decanter). Where would one "plug in" the body? How much "juice", and for what duration? Would there be a core meltdown? Would this be a "firestarter"? Would we end up singing "Who can it beeee now" when someone comes knocking on our door? Do speed freaks experience a sort of overclocking? What is the bottleneck in their performance? Do they end up talking to God and 24,480 baud, with their vocal box becoming a bottleneck? If their brain overloads God, is it a sort of "firewire", or a slower Universal Switchboard (USB)?
Please, respond QUICKLY... (subspace frequency 2B, code 47...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
corsair's 2.133 MHZ ram might have dominated in the 1980's...
... I forget what happened next.
That should be 2,133MHz by the way, not 2.133MHz. I don't think they've made 2MHz RAM for a long time!
I have a homeopathic CPU...the slower it goes the faster it is. It's set to 0 Hz.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Gamers and enthusiasts are big influencers, and when the Core 2's came out and destroyed AMD's performance, gamers and enthusiasts demonstrated zero loyalty. They go with what's faster.
In general, if this continues as a trend, when AMD finally shapes up and starts competing with Intel again, if they are OC friendly, they will once again become the choice of gamers and enthusiasts. Maybe this will help their stock (I certainly hope so...)
I doubt the CPU core and memory controller run at the same voltage. You're not going to run a 45nm processor on 1.5 volts.
isn't it in the best interest of RAM companies to have ppl blow up their modules out of warranty by over clocking?
just b/c they say you can do it doesn't mean when you blow your ram up they will give you some new product :P
A few months after the initial release of desktop i7 chips, they'll release a chip that can handle up to 2.0V DDR3 running at up to 2.4 GHz. The CPU will cost $1500, have an unlocked multiplier, and require a $300 motherboard, a $200 power supply, and a $100 cooling device to function with the out-of-spec enthusiast RAM. Gamers with more money than sense will eagerly shell out for it, and blame Nvidia's drivers when they only get an extra 1.3 FPS over JEDEC-compliant mainstream CPU/RAM configurations.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
wherever red-commie AMD butts are from. AMD today is like Transmeta in 2000, crap without a prayer. /.
I do hope these people realize that their computer is slow due to hard drive access speeds and operating system limitations. Memory and CPU are the least of our problems today.