Motherboard defaults undervolting memory?

[Tantalum]

(Motherboard is a 680i SLI, ram a 2Gb stick of Mushkin Enhanced Redline DDR2 PC8000)

So this last week I made a thread about how the stick of memory in my desktop failed on me, and had to be RMA'ed. Well, I decided I might as well buy an extra stick of the same type so that I could have 4GB's of ram and upgrade to Windows 7 64bit.

Well, I installed my new ram. Ran Prime95... and it failed. I thought "How is this possible? Are my motherboard or CPU damaged?", so I decided to open up my bios and check the memory settings...

What I found was that my motherboard was only giving the ram 1.8v, but according to the sticker on the side of the ram, its voltage range is 2.0v-2.1v. So I upped the voltage to 2.0v, and I am now running Prime95, so far there have been no errors but I was worried that my motherboard was defaulting to 1.8v for a reason. Is there a chance that setting the voltage to 2.0v could damage my motherboard? I had thought voltage settings were detected and set automatically to manufacturer recommended values, so I'm not sure if the ram was set at 1.8v because anything higher than that is over the recommended values for the motherboard.

EDIT : Just noticed that it also changed the timings from 7-7-7-12 to 7-7-7-18 and lowered it's speed to 800Mhz from 1000Mhz.

 

[jiminator]

I think the 680i will complain about high overvoltage. I think there was memory out up to 2.4v. It is not set high by default in the SPD because some boards would not boot at all. The latest intel processors include the memory controller in the cpu, and so for those they have set strict guidelines on what the memory voltage can be set to.

 

[Tantalum]

Well, it seemed stable at 2.0v with 7-7-7-12 timings, but it would crash on startup if I tried to bump the memory up to 1066Mhz (Closest I can get to 1000 with 5:4 linked FSB). I set the timings back to 7-7-7-18 and now it boots just fine with 1066Mhz, running Prime95 to test if it's stable.

Does anyone know which setting will result in a bigger performance increase? Tighter timings or faster memory clock?

 

[BillParrish]

I was worried that my motherboard was defaulting to 1.8v for a reason.
> No worries 1.8V is the standard voltage for DDR2.


Is there a chance that setting the voltage to 2.0v could damage my motherboard?
> No as you have discovered enthusiast motherboards allow memory voltages above the standard 1.8V to accommodate high performance memory which typically requires more than stock voltage.

I had thought voltage settings were detected and set automatically to manufacturer recommended values, so I'm not sure if the ram was set at 1.8v because anything higher than that is over the recommended values for the motherboard.
> if you have XMP memory support and it is working properly (not always a sure thing and sometimes not implemented fully), the board should have set the timings and memory voltage to the high performance profiles stored in the memory sticks SPD chip. Also if your FSB does not match the FSB the extended profile is listed under the board might ignore it. I am not up enough on Nvidia chipsets to say for sure. But what you describe is common and that is an older board.

You have nothing to worry about, use CPU-Z to look at the profiles stored in your memory SPD chip and manually set the timings to the ones that closest match your current FSB. You have already taken care of the voltage and you might consider going to 2.1V as usually the high end of the manuf recommended voltage range provides the most stability and performance. You might or might not have to loosen them if you FSB (x your memory multiplier) results in an effective memory speed faster than the stored profiles. (Would need more details about your settings and if you are OCing to say) but anyway the point is your board is acting perfectly normal and the bottom line is that all of this "automatically detect" stuff is even to this day on new boards, not perfected.