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Old November 23rd 04, 06:34 AM
Sheldon Roger
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Chris wrote in message . ..
Greets All,

Due to all of the problems I have been having with my Gigabyte
GA-K8NSNXP-939 mobo, I am considering replacing it. It doesn't like a
dual memory configuration with my wallet busting Corsair PC3200XLPRO
memory, unless I relax the timings. Even with manually relaxed
timings, I am still only 90% stable and will randomly bomb out of
applications/games with a memory error. I also tried some Kingston C3
PC3200 memory that I obtained from a machine that I built for work,
and the Gigabyte board was just as unstable.

FWIW, I have all of the latest drivers for all my devices as well as
the F6 Bios, and I am still having fits. I verified that the Corsair
RAM is good by testing it on an ASUS A7V880 VIA KT880 (with an Athlon
XP 3200+, 2 WD Raptors, and an ATI 9200 Video card) and running Prime
95 for 48 hours without a single glitch in the torture test. In my
system I get anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours before the torture
test bombs with manually relaxed timings. I verified that the memory
problem exists on Win 2k SP4, WinXP SP1, and WinXP SP2 because I was
insane enough to spend a week testing it with each operating system.

Regardless, I was wondering if I should consider the Abit or ASUS VIA
chipset based Socket 939 boards to replace my POS Gigabyte, order a
MSI K8N Neo, or wait? I have read on some forums where users replaced
their Gigabyte with the MSI K8N Neo and it worked fine for them.
Unfortunately, I take everything I read with a grain of salt now
because I read such rave reviews of how the POS board I have now was
so great before I plunked my some hard earned cash.

I guess my other alternative is to yank one of my 512 sticks and just
run with 512 in single channel mode, as this finicky Gigabyte runs
stable with either stick of ram in slot 1. Naturally, that defeats
the purpose of spending a small fortune on my Corsair RAM. I guess
plans B and C would be to replace the ram or wait to see what the
future holds for an ideal motherboard replacement.

Lastly, I have learned some valuable lessons from this experience:

1. The most expensive board out there is not necessarily the best.

2. Reviews tend to be biased and misleading.

3. Adopting new technology too soon is a royal PITA.


Thanks for any advice that you can offer me.

Chris


Before you give up on the Gigabyte try this:

1. Lower the dram to 4x (166)

2. Change the memory settings to:

11,15,4,3,8,4,3,2,3

3. Change the CL to 2.5

4. Increase the CPU upward from 200, in steps to increase
your memory bus speed. If you can get to 234 you will be running
memory at 400.

This is what I have done with two sticks of Mushkin, LII,
3200 memory in Dual Memory in Dimm 3 & 4. I am using the Win XP 64
evaluation OS so I can't really accurately evaluate a change in
benchmarking as I haven't found a program yet to evaluate memory
accurately.Note that Sandra is now releasing a 64 bit program. If
you are running Win XP you should be able to benchmark memory changes.

I recall an evaluation of memory settings which mentioned changes
int TRP,TRAS,Cl, TRCD and how little they affected peformance. 2T-1T
had the largest effect 1.1 to 2.1%. Can't locate this URL, but
if you can find it would be helpful.

BTW I chose the Gigabyte board because of hearing about memory problems
with the MSI.