Adam said:
Thanks (Guru Paul), sounds like the "most" limiting factor is
not the mobo but rather the CPU. If so, I'll be keeping my eyes open for
good CPU deals. What's a good not-too-expensive CPU for my system?
BTW, memtest86+ v4.20 has been running for 43+ minutes and
so far so good with no errors.
Memtest86+ shows...
Settings: RAM: 666 MHz (DDR1333) / CAS: 11-11-11-28 / DDR3 (64 bits)
You can tighten up your timing parameters a bit.
Using speed ratios and rounding up gives...
DDR3-1866 9-9-9 = DDR3-1333 7-7-7
The easiest setting to change, is to change just CAS.
For example 7-11-11-28 is better than nothing. The
utility of the parameters decreases from left to right.
The left-most one (CAS) is the most important. Since
the clock speed is dropped, a clock period is wider,
so we need fewer of them (7) to get first data from
the RAM.
Normally, I'd tell you to use CPU-Z in Windows, which can
dump the SPD table and give you some idea why the BIOS selected
those particular values.
In this example, the left-most column would be for
DDR3-1333. The frequency is 622, and double that is
close to 1333. So that would be the timing for
DDR3-1333 clock setting.
http://cdn.overclock.net/5/59/900x900px-LL-59cd4535_CPU-Z20SPD.png
Using those exact numbers, you could enter the BIOS, find
the custom memory page, and enter the numbers.
It's also possible, to dump the SPD EEPROM and analyse the
table by hand. (I have to dig up the appropriate JEDEC
decoder document, which isn't always that easy.)
I'm running Gentoo on the test box right now, and
it doesn't have module "EEPROM" in the kernel.
Without that, i2c-tools program named "decode-dimms"
won't work. And the information from decode-dimms
is not suited to directly dialing into the BIOS.
It's more a conversion of the raw hex, into English.
But without the interpretation to make timing tables.
I can't really test this at the moment, because I can't
access the eeprom. I do actually have i2c-tools loaded,
but I'm have to rebuild the kernel. And I'm not in the
mood for that right now. There's no place to
sit, where that computer is located
Paul