As a follow up to the memory speed issue, I just spoke to a friend at Corsair who tells me the Asus P5NSLI suffers from a problem which does not allow it to read the memory SPD correctly and it must be set up manually on that motherboard or it will never run right. That falls in line with what I see in CPUz.
Also, the 601 BIOS is known for memory instability. It was the the initial BIOS release for the motherboard. the current BIOS is 1001 but #903 may also be used as it was the latest that had a major update to it.
I was also informed the motherboard has issues on the northbridge that a BIOS update may correct.
The next question I would have, is, have you any expereince in BIOS updating and if so, do you feel comfortable about a BIOS upgrade?
If not, we will work with what you have however there may be limits to how far we can go. Anything will be better than leaving the settings as they are now.
I want to follow up on the above. The motherboard is currently using BIOS 106. This was the initial release BIOS for the board. It was designed BEFORE the 8800 cards were on the market. I have no idea if one of the BIOS upgrades addresses Northbridge and PCIe issues however if it does, upgading the BIOS may very well improve the situation.
I also have to warn that it may not change anything and there is always the possibility things may be worse. If that is found, downgrading back to another or the original BIOS may be required.
As I said, we can work with what you have a see how it fairs and then upgrade if it is thought it may help, or, you can opt to upgrade the BIOS first. I will leave that decision up to you.
DO THIS:
If you do upgrade the BIOS, you MUST shut down the computer, unplug it from the wall, discharge the PSU (hit the tower button several times) and then clear the CMOS by moving the the jumper to clear and back to RUN. Then boot the computer, enter the BIOS, go to the EXIT screen and select LOAD SETUP DEFAULTS, F-10 save and exit....
