DDR400 Issues

Hi all, a quick problem here. I have a Gigabyte 7VA MB, about a year old.
Until yesterday it had 256MB Samsung DDR400 on it. Yesterday I added a
Micron 512MB DDR400 module, so now has two of its 3 slots used. The 512 is
in the first slot and the 256 is in the one next to it. The problem is that
my PC has become quite unstable since the RAM upgrade, and has had a few
hardware crashes, ie blue screen in Windows 2000 which only recover after a
boot into safe mode.

The other issue which I have always had on this MB is that the DDR clock is
only running at 333MHz, not 400 which the board claims to support, according
to my motherboard monitor utility. Forcing 400 in bios causes the PC to not
boot.

Any ideas on either issue?

Cheers

Mark

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 10:05:06 +0100, "Mark \(UK\)"
wrote:

Hi all, a quick problem here. I have a Gigabyte 7VA MB, about a year old.
Until yesterday it had 256MB Samsung DDR400 on it. Yesterday I added a
Micron 512MB DDR400 module, so now has two of its 3 slots used. The 512 is
in the first slot and the 256 is in the one next to it. The problem is that
my PC has become quite unstable since the RAM upgrade, and has had a few
hardware crashes, ie blue screen in Windows 2000 which only recover after a
boot into safe mode.

The other issue which I have always had on this MB is that the DDR clock is
only running at 333MHz, not 400 which the board claims to support, according
to my motherboard monitor utility. Forcing 400 in bios causes the PC to not
boot.

Any ideas on either issue?

Cheers

Mark


There's little to no gain running the memory bus faster than the
FSB... if you have the FSB that high, then it's an area to look at as
cause for the instability, but otherwise try setting the memory bus to
synchrous setting with the FSB.

Try moving the module in the 2nd slot, to the 3rd.

Check the BIOS to verify that it's set to use "SPD" timings for the
memory.

You might find that the memory isn't stable unless manually setting
slower timings (higher numbers) in the BIOS. If this is the case then
I'd consider whether the board or memory is to blame, in case you want
to return the new memory. You might find other users of that board
with experience and tips in some website forums like the one at
http://www.amdmb.com

Also it might be helpful to check the system before/during/after
making changes, with memtest86:
http://www.memtest86.com

I would also remove the old module and test only the new, to verify
that it at least works at it's spec speed by itself, else there's
little point in any further attempts, it should be returned to place
of purchase instead.


Dave

Mark (UK) wrote:
Hi all, a quick problem here. I have a Gigabyte 7VA MB, about a year
old. Until yesterday it had 256MB Samsung DDR400 on it. Yesterday I
added a Micron 512MB DDR400 module, so now has two of its 3 slots
used. The 512 is in the first slot and the 256 is in the one next to
it. The problem is that my PC has become quite unstable since the RAM
upgrade, and has had a few hardware crashes, ie blue screen in
Windows 2000 which only recover after a boot into safe mode.

The other issue which I have always had on this MB is that the DDR
clock is only running at 333MHz, not 400 which the board claims to
support, according to my motherboard monitor utility. Forcing 400 in
bios causes the PC to not boot.

Any ideas on either issue?

Cheers

Mark

The KT400 chipset is kind of finicky with PC3200 RAM. I'd disable SPD in the
BIOS and set a value of 166MHz(DDR333) with default timings. Disable Top
Performance. Which CPU are you using and at what speed ? Refer to pages 5 &
87 of the manual.


--
Winerr 00B - Push Error; Removing Files to Make Room for Advertisement

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 13:15:39 +0100, "Mark \(UK\)"
wrote:


There's little to no gain running the memory bus faster than the
FSB... if you have the FSB that high, then it's an area to look at as
cause for the instability, but otherwise try setting the memory bus to
synchrous setting with the FSB.

My FSB is set to default (think thats 266MHz) for my MB and cpu (athlon xp
1700+).

Oh, well certainly the system won't post if you up the memory bus to
400MHz, since it only does "+33", which would be running at 333Mhz.
You might even consider backing the memory bus down to synchronous
setting to the FSB as I mentioned previously, to have both running at
266.


Try moving the module in the 2nd slot, to the 3rd.

Ok i've just moved it, not sure how it could help though, whats the theory?
Am i right to keep the new bigger module in the 'higher' slot? Config is now
DDR1: 512MB, DDR2: Empty, DDR3: 256MB.

The board should have termination resistors after the last memory
slot, but even so the memory bus "seems" to usually be cleaner with
the memory at both "ends" of it, leaving any empty slots in the
middle. Granted, it's usually not a large difference, but sometimes
enough. As you mentioned in another post, changing the memory from
"Turbo" probably helped as much or more.... always, always, always
return the board to default settings before trying to troubleshoot
memory. If the board defaulted to "turbo", it shouldn't have, is a
bios "bug".


Will run like this for an hour or so until next crash...

It would take ages to determine memory instability in this way, and
you may corrupt data too... better to use memtest86 (linked
previously) to test for a few hours. Personally I am more agressive
than that, I up the FSB and memory bus speed (keeping within the
ceiling speed of the CPU of course) because I want to know what speed
causes errors, I WANT it to err... so I know how much of a margin I
have... If it only errs at 180Mhz for example, you have a pretty fair
margin at 166MHz.


Check the BIOS to verify that it's set to use "SPD" timings for the
memory.

Can't find that setting. The only memory ssettings present are the bus speed
and the voltage. Do you think +0.1 voltage may help? i know that can help
overclockers stabilise their system. None of my stuff has ever been
overclocked by the way.

It shouldn't be needed. If you can't find SPD setting option, then do
you have an "auto" or "manual" choice, where you get to manually
choose the memory timings? Letting it run in "Auto", or however that
particular bios words it, to not be choosing the values yourself, is
the SPD setting.


http://www.memtest86.com

I would also remove the old module and test only the new, to verify

Thats the next port of call.

It's an important step... but since the system seems stable with both,
odds are pretty good the new module is ok, yet perhaps it (or the old
module) has too little margin to allow running both modules at the
same time. In general the more memory you use, the better the memory
needs be, given the same motherboard.


Its Micron ram from Crucial.com, they sell that stuff on reliability so i'm
sure they'd take it back it was faulty.


A module can test perfrect fine yet the motherboard can be the
culprit, esecially when running multiple modules. It could easily be
that the older module is of lesser capabilites, that a pair of the
newer module(s) would work better, but again the motherboard may be
the weakest link, it may not matter which modules unless they're quite
over-spec for the application.


Dave

Mark (UK) wrote:

Hi all, a quick problem here. I have a Gigabyte 7VA MB, about a year old.
Until yesterday it had 256MB Samsung DDR400 on it. Yesterday I added a
Micron 512MB DDR400 module, so now has two of its 3 slots used. The 512 is
in the first slot and the 256 is in the one next to it. The problem is that
my PC has become quite unstable since the RAM upgrade, and has had a few
hardware crashes, ie blue screen in Windows 2000 which only recover after a
boot into safe mode.

The other issue which I have always had on this MB is that the DDR clock is
only running at 333MHz, not 400 which the board claims to support, according
to my motherboard monitor utility. Forcing 400 in bios causes the PC to not
boot.

Well, it looks like i been having the same problems, except i only got
one stick of 512Mb ram.

I got a Abit nf7-s motherboard, what I done is lowered the ram timings
from aggresive to sdp and put the ram voltage up by .2 of a volt and it
seems to work.
I do not know anything about your board, but see if you can do what i done