Hi
quick question
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128326

THis board, if you look at spec, the memory standard is DDR2 1200. Does that mean that this motherboard ONLY work with DDR2 1200 memory or does it mean that this MB also works with all memories lower than DDR2 1200 such as DDR 2 800?

I was going to hit check out button for Asus Rampage but then i wanted to take another look at the list and saw this board and looks good while being slightly cheaper as well.

THanks

It will handle other memory speeds as well. You may want to reference the qualified vendor list for memory for that board.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileLis [...] 38-dq6.pdf

It means that it will support memory up to that speed. It should work with DDR2 800 just fine. In fact, what it means is that you can get DDR2 800 and overclock it to the DDR2 1200 spec and the board will work. As to the ASUS Rampage, I have a Rampage Formula X48 and it supports up to DDR2 1200 as well, but is working fine with my overclocked DDR2 800. I looked over the Gigabyte board and read some reviews at Anandtech on the two boards and decided to spend the extra money on the ASUS board and getting the extra features of the X48. So far its been good for me.

Oh so you have rampage urself? nice. How is that board working so far?
It was kinda confusing because some of the boards had memory standards like DDR2 1066/1200 and some had just DDR2 1200. So i thought it meant it supports only that. But it's nice to know. So yeah how is the board?

@OP:

If you are planing on getting RAM natively higher than DDR2 800 be aware that there will be compatibility issues. Many users reports and my personal testing has shown that there is a very good chance you will run in to issues with RAM higher than DDR2 800, such as DDR2 1066. I recommend you get quality DDR2 800 RAM and run them at 1:1 ratio or overclock the RAM. This issue dose not apply to DDR2 800 RAM that has been overclocked. Check and see the track record for your choice motherboard with RAM compatibility issues. This mainly applies to P35 and some X38 boards.

The highest official speed for DDR2 is 800, the speeds for DDR2 are 400, 533, 667 and 800 so any board that supports DDR2 has to support at least one of those speeds. Conversly every stick of RAM sold over 800 is sold at it's overclocked speed and has to work at one of those 4 speeds listed. DDR2 1066 is really just overclocked DDR2 800.

I have the Rampage Formula as well and I would highly recommend it.

The X48 Rampage Formula has worked great for me. It has an abundance of settings in the BIOS that rivals DFI, yet I can leave things set on "Auto" and it takes care of itself rather well. I got to over 4ghz by only changing the FSB and raising the CPU voltage and ram voltage a bit, leaving everything else on auto. OK, that seems lazy compared to what I had to do in the past, but it works and I can't complain about the results.

Memory support for your board

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileLis [...] 38-dq6.pdf