Intel 965 chipsets and high performance DDRAM - Bad Match?

[texan1337]

I was about to purchase a motherboard for the computer I'm building at new egg, but I came across a funny statement under the board's specifications:" Notice: Only DDR2-800 memory supporting JEDEC approved 1.8V operation with timings of 5-5-5 or 6-6-6 is supported on Intel Desktop Boards based on Intel 965 Express Chipsets." The board is the Asus P5B-VM and you can see what I'm talking about here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131043

This worries me because I just bought some nice OCZ DDR800 RAM on eBay. With timing of 4-4-4-15 and an operating voltage of 1.9 to 2.2 volts. You can see the full specifications here: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_ddr2_pc2_6400_platinum_revision_2_dual_channel

Will this RAM not work with my motherboard?

 

[scorch]

I just noticed that today on another post. Some one wanted an opinion on a new build on an ASUS with the 965 chipset and I came across that warning. I'm wondering whats up too.

 

[nibenentt]

With the newer bioses that the motherboards are shipping with now most of the higher performance ram works with them. If it doesn't just borrow from somonoe or buy some cheap generic stuff and up the voltage for the ram in the bios then switch the ram over. (The problem with the ram was mainly on the gigabyte motherboards at launch but now with the new bios most works. The 1.9v ram in my 965 board (Gigabyte GA 965P S3) booted no problem.)

 

[texan1337]

With the newer bioses that the motherboards are shipping with now most of the higher performance ram works with them. If it doesn't just borrow from somonoe or buy some cheap generic stuff and up the voltage for the ram in the bios then switch the ram over. (The problem with the ram was mainly on the gigabyte motherboards at launch but now with the new bios most works. The 1.9v ram in my 965 board (Gigabyte GA 965P S3) booted no problem.)

thanks!

 

[Nonymous]

I was about to purchase a motherboard for the computer I'm building at new egg, but I came across a funny statement under the board's specifications:" Notice: Only DDR2-800 memory supporting JEDEC approved 1.8V operation with timings of 5-5-5 or 6-6-6 is supported on Intel Desktop Boards based on Intel 965 Express Chipsets." The board is the Asus P5B-VM

If you download the board's manual from Asus website, you might likely see a very similar statement. There's a statement like this in the manual for my P5B Deluxe... It says something like, [paraphrase] "Due to limitations of the p965 chipset, DDR2-800 CL4 memory will be automatically be underclocked to DDR2-533. Manually adjust bios timings to override." [/paraphrase]. I bought DDR2-800 CL4 memory (4-4-4-12) and ran into just that. Basically, the default memory voltage on the motherboard is 1.9v. And the memory I bought requires 2.1v. And for whatever reason, the motherboard didn't know to raise up from its default. I've read on some sites that raising the voltage isn't enought. It's best to manually set all the timings, too, due to problems the boards have with reading the EPP timings.