Below you can see out test PC setup:

• CPU: Intel Q9300 Retail
• Motherboard: Asus P5K Premium BIOS 0612
• PSU: OCZ GameXStream GXS600 SLI-Ready
• VGA: MSI 7600GT Silent (stock memory/core timings)
• HDD: WD 800JB
• OS: Windows XP SP2 with all the latest updates installed

In this series of tests our goal is to examine the stability of the memory modules under various frequencies at the lowest available timings. This is rather a test and trial procedure and of course the results may vary among motherboard and of course different chipsets.

Starting from 400MHz, we managed to get down to 4-4-4-15-1T timings. We tried to lower them further but they refused to work, even with higher voltage. So back to 4-4-4-15 with 1.8V where the system was totally stable.

By changing the FSB:DRAM divider, we were able to get to a higher memory speed, without affecting the CPU speed. So we reached the 417MHz and still we have CL4:

Another memory divider allows us to go even higher up to 445Mhz with CL4

With 2.30V, we managed to get 500Mhz with CL4, although we had to rise the tRCD and tRP from 4 to 5. So we got a 4-5-5-15-2T:

Getting to 1066MHz with CL4 (2.30V) is very impressive:

After that point we had to switch to CL5 in order to maintain stability at 2.30V. The 556MHz (1112MHz effective) was very easy to achieve:

Pushing both our test motherboard and the memory we went up to 576MHz (effective 1152MHz) with CL5, reaching their specifications' limits. However, we will try to go even higher:

We managed to reach the 600MHz, which is probably a top roof for the specific motherboard.

For our tests, all settings were left to Auto.