Anderwin Posted December 21, 2004 Share Posted December 21, 2004 Hey, I've been struggling with this problem ever since I built my new machine (4 months ago). Maybe you guys can help? Problem: Unstable memory (surprise). Can run Windows with only the occasional BSOD, but RAM hogs like games (especially Half-Life 2 ) and the Macromedia Suite (especially Flash) are very unstable. I can usually only get about 3-10 minutes uptime with any of these programs before they crash to DT. TwinX1024-3200XLPRO (a.k.a. 2x512 MB Corsair XMS 3200XLPRO rated for 2-2-2-5 latency) Which is two sticks of: CMX512-3200XLPRO XMS3208v1.1 0426092 - 1 (All values read off the side of one of the sticks. I bought them in a twin pack.) They are running in dual channel mode with an: -ABIT AV8 3rd-Eye s939 motherboard for AMD64 that has been flashed to the latest BIOS revision -AMD 3500+ -Enermax 420W PSU (stable rails, I've tested them) They are currently running at 2.7v. Nothing has been overclocked, ever. The Story: On my first installs of Windows, I kept BSODing half-way through, so I upped the vDimm to 2.7 (my mobo had set it to 2.65 for some reason). It was still unstable, though, so I relaxed the CAS latency to 2.5. This fixed the problem. Now, Windows runs fine, but as I said above, most memory intensive things are unstable. I have tried every possible latency setting combination I can think of at both 2.7v and 2.8v, but neither have fixed the problem (2.8v made the modules MORE unstable for some reason...). What really scares me is that, over the past 4 months, the modules have gradually degraded. It used to be that they could handle 2.5-2-2-5 and be stable in Windows, but over the past few months I've had to keep relaxing them for my machine to not get BSODed repeatedly, so that now I'm running at 2.5-3-3-5. Tightening or relaxing the CAS latency now makes Windows refuse to boot. I'm very confuzzled. MemTest86 doesn't report any errors unless I tell it to do the comprehensive test-everything run, in which case I get some rediculous number of errors (at any latency timings). Also, I don't know if this will help, but every time Half-Life 2 crashes it reports the memory address of the failing sector, and it's always the same (close to 900 if I remember correctly...or was it 90,000? I'll have to check again....9something). So yeah...any help would really be appreciated. cries a tear for his beautiful but obstinate RAM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wired Posted December 21, 2004 Share Posted December 21, 2004 FYI, HL will crash if you fart on it... so... Have you tried memtest with one stick at a time in the same slot? If not, try it @ 2-3-2-5, the ras to cas delay is the 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 21, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 21, 2004 I would suggest you skip the first slots and use slots 2-4 or 3-4 and sset the Dim Voltage to 2.8 Volts and use the following settings. CAS Latency CL=2.0 Row Cycle Time tRC Bios Default Row Refresh Cyc Time tRFC Bios Default Ras# to CAS# delay tRCD 3 Row to Row delay Bios Default Min Ras# Active Time tRAS 11 Row Precharge Time tRP 2 Write Recovery Time Bios Default Write to Read delay Bios Default Read to Write Delay Bios Default Refresh Period tREF Bios Default Enable 2T Timing Disabled Then test the system with http://www.memtest.org and make sure it's stable! If you have problems, I would set Enable 2T Timings to AUTO and test it again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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