Hi there.

I have recently upgraded from a Athlon XP2800 to a new build with a E2220 running on an Asrock P43Twins1600 with 2gb of OCZ 800Mhz 4-4-4-15 RAM. Having moved from the Athlon which was only slightly overclocked I am a bit of a newbie to doing major overclocking.

I originally had the CPU running at 266x11 which run nicely. I have now got the CPU running at 333x9 with 1.31V which runs well with no stability issues. Idles at 35 degrees using a Arctic freezer 7 Pro.

I would like to lower the FSB a bit to around 320 and use x10 to get 3.2Ghz. The motherboard has jumpers for strapping the RAM when overlcloking and these are currently set on the 1333Mhz FSB strap. If I try to set the FSB down to 320 this underclocks the RAM as well. If I change the jumpers to 1066Mhz strap then the RAM is highly overlclocked.

Am I being stupid?!?!?! ISsthis the way it works or am I missing something in the BIOS which will lock the RAM at 800Mhz while using a "non-standard" FSB (ie. not 800, 1066 or 1333)

Any help much appreciated.

Nope, that sounds like how things work. Most of us have more options in our bios for tweaking and getting things just right but it all does work like that. BTW the highest multi will usually give you the best OC.

OK, thanks for that.
So if I have no other options in the BIOS for locking the RAM, if I use 320 for a FSB then I will have to use slower Ram frequency?

There are a stupid amount of options in the BIOS for tweaking RAM timings so I'm a bit disapointed that I cant lock the RAM at these other FSB settings without over or under clocking it. Oh well!

Thanks again

I just re-read your original post and I guess I misunderstood it a bit. The 800/1066/1333 thing is your divider settings it think. These are what you will mess with to OC the ram.

I'll go with a 400*8 set. Since that will utilize your DDR2 800 naturally and not having to pay for a high multiplier.