Wording help

[Skullywag]

I own a P67A-GD65 board.  I'm a little confused about the wording of usable memory.
Memory standard lists: DDR3 1066/1333/1600*/2133*(OC)
Does this mean I can buy either DDR3 1600 or 2133 modules, and have them work with the board through OC settings, or that 1066/1333 will OC to 1600/2133?

 

[Jack the Newbie]

What the *-sign and the *OC-marker specify is that the mentioned memory speeds (everything faster than DDR3-1333) is to be considered OVERCLOCKING, which means that the UEFI/BIOS-Setup will allow you to set those speeds, but that this does not automatically mean that those clock speeds will yield a stable system under all circumstances.

The memory controller is part of the processor, not the mainboard. And according to Intel's specifications the maximum memory speed supported natively is DDR3-1333.  Everything beyond that is to be considered out-of-spec operation and therefore comes without stability guarantees (which is logical). Stick to DDR3-1333 memory modules, built to run at industry standard voltage (1.5V +/-0.075V).  Everything beyond that, even if it runs stable, will not really give you any significant performance gain anyway. Look here for benchmark results: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=147704.0

 

[Skullywag]

Cool.  Thank you!