me at yomamas wrote:
I recently put together an upgrade system from parts which came partly
from ebay. I got a MSI K8T Neo-2F and Athlon 64 - 3000+ from mwave
new, and paired that with a 1GB stick of generic used ram from ebay.
It appears likely the ram has a small problem.

When I run memtest86 on this setup, there is always an error at two
locations on this stick, no matter what timings I have tried. Mind
you, before I updated the bios there were some other flaky things
happening here (i.e., XP only acknowledged 256MB of the 1 GB to exist,
although other programs such as CPU-Z would list at 1 GB). But only
memtest86 has ever given me a problem here. I have another memory test
that runs under XP, it will run all day w/o error. If I do not
overclock, Prime95 will run all day with no error.

Can I just use this stick w/o problems? I have yet to notice much
problem here, just the memtest86 error. I also have a stick of Kbyte
256MB from Staples, it runs MUCH worse with MANY more errors than this
generic stick.

Are there any other things I can try here? Any other memory tests to
cross-check this result?

If a stick of memory fails any test, then it's bad. As long as the test
keeps failing in the same place, then you can be pretty sure it's the RAM,
not the chipset or anything else, that is giving you problems. If a stick of
RAM fails at any point in a 24-hour memtest86 test, it's back to the shop it
goes in my books. Admittedly, I've only ever had two "bad" sticks (both
generics, usually 1 or two bad cells) out of at least 40 or so that I've
dealt with (mostly generics). I've found a local shop that seems quite happy
to do returns on slightly bad RAM (I've got a strong suspicion it just ends
up in their prebuilt computers or goes to people who don't worry too much
about the odd error ...) and also has one of the best prices around on RAM,
so I just return it and get one that works properly. And that's what I'd
recommend doing with the 1gb stick you have if you use your computer for
much more than gaming (where long-term stability is not greatly important
....).

--
Michael Brown
www.emboss.co.nz : OOS/RSI software and more
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