New RAM - BIOS config?

Hi all,

Just another quick Newbie's first build question.
I've installed a dual channel matched set of 2x4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR3. CAS is 9-9-9-24 at 1866MHz, 1.50-1.65v. Everything works, PC is running fine and I even know vaguely what those numbers all mean!!

I understand I need to nip into my BIOS and alter the figures therein to match the RAM to get full performance, but am not sure exactly what to put where (it seems there's more numbers than just the above).
I've set the BIOS to the 1867MHz option, but am unsure where to proceed from here. I tried a Google, but could only find guides from 2002 and they didn't seem to cover what I'm looking for.

What am I missing?

Cheers,
Tasky.

I may be wrong here but your RAM should support XMP. If you set your RAM to XMP profile 1 for example it should configure itself correctly. At least it does with my motherboard.

Aye, go to BIOS and set the XMP profiles. If your modules are anything like mine, you should have 2 x profiles.
But your current manual settings are not far from the default I think.
My friend got a set, which are advertised for 1600Mhz @ 1-8-8-8-24 @ 1.5v (currently over clocked to 2133Mhz @ 1-11-11-11-32 @ 1.5v).
If you like, you can try higher frequency at the current timings and voltage (and some MemTest86) for a mediocre speed increase, otherwise just leave them.

XMP?
That's Intel boards, isn't it?
I have an AM3+ M5A78L-LE board.

I have the Jumper Free Config -> DRAM Timings Config:

CAS# Latency 9 CLK
RAS# to CAS Latency 9 CLK
RAS# PRE Time 9 CLK
RAS# ACT Time 24 CLK
READ to PRE Time 7 [Auto]
ROW Cycle Time 47 [Auto]
WRITE Recovery Time 14 [Auto]
RAS# to RAS# Delay 6 [Auto]

READ to WRITE Delay [Auto]
WRITE to READ Delay (DD) [Auto]
WRITE to READ Delay (SD) [Auto]
WRITE to WRITE Timing [Auto]
READ to READ Timing [Auto]
REF Cycle Time [Auto]
Refresh Rate [Auto]
Command Rate [Auto]

New AMD boards support XMP.

Checked your manual, it does seem that you don't have it. The five most important setting for you are the CAS, RAS_to_CAS, RAS_PRE, RAS_ACT and the Command rate. You can leave the rest on AUTO. I would say your settings are adequate if you are running at 1866Mhz.

Well, I *think* I am running at 1866...
I use CPU-ID and GPU-ID to check out the specs I do understand, but the fact that I had to set it to 1866 in the first place just has me worried that my set-up may not be fully optimised.

Fully optimized would be if you would have the highest available stable frequency at 1.5v resp. 1.65v and afterwards lowering the timings till the system would still remain stable. Unfortunately the process would be very time consuming and the results would not reflect your time invested at all.

Well, it seems to run OK as is, so I guess I'll go with that. Not noticed any problems so far and my RAM usuage barely rises above 50% even while running high-end games.