Memory Overclocking
By Gabriel Torres on June 19, 2005 Page 5 of 6

Rasing the Memory Voltage

The most common trick in overclocking is increasing the voltage of the component (CPU, video card or memory). Increasing the voltage usually allows the component to reach a higher clock.

So, after you find out the maximum clock your memory can reach, you can try increasing its voltage to see you if you can achieve a higher clock. But you need to pay attention to not burn your memory! DDR memories use a standard voltage of 2.5 V and we do not recommend that you go over 2.8 V (there are memories from OCZ where the manufacturer states that you can run them up to 3.2 V without burning them).

The memory voltage settings can also be found under the "Frequency/Voltage Control" menu on setup under names as "DIMM OverVoltage Control", "DRAM Voltage Regulator" and "DIMM Voltage Regulator". Low-end motherboards don't have this kind of configuration.

The options you will find depends on the motherboard model. Some motherboards have more voltage options than others and the way the voltage increase is expressed also depends on the motherboard model.

The motherboard featured on Figure 6 has only three options for memory voltage: Normal (which is 2.5 V), + 0.1 V (i.e. 2.6 V) and + 0.2 V (i.e. 2.7 V).

Memory Overclocking
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Figure 6: Example of memory voltage configuration.

On the motherboard shown of Figures 7 and 8 you will need first to change the "Voltage Fine Tuning" option in order to change the memory voltage. On this motherboard you have four options for memory voltage: Normal (which is 2.5 V), + 0.1 V (i.e. 2.6 V), + 0.2 V (i.e. 2.7 V) and + 0.3 V (i.e. 2.8 V).

Memory Overclocking
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Figure 7: Enabling memory voltage increase.

Memory Overclocking
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Figure 8: Another example of memory voltage configuration.

One more example of Figure 9, where you can change the memory voltage to 2.7 V, 2.8 V and 2.9 V.

Memory Overclocking
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Figure 9: One more memory voltage configuration example.


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