cant pass prime?

S

styleboy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
280
ok here is the situation..

I'm running a barton 2800 at 10x200. Motherboard is an abit nf7s v2.0. ram is corsair valueselect pc3200 3x512 running in dual channel mode stock voltage.

I'm running the ram at 5:4, so it is running at 320.

No matter what voltage I give my cpu, I can't pass the prime torture test.

Booted in 1.775v, 2 mins into prime
1.75 - 2 hours
1.725 1 1/2 hours
1.70 2 1/2 hours

im now booted at 1.675, and I guess I'll try, but I really don't think its going to happen. Could it be bad cpu?

Maybe I'll have to upgrade a little earlier, but I wish I could just run this thing stable for a few more months.

p.s. My first boot was 1.7 and I added voltage from there, now I came back down to this voltage. And cooling is a water cooling setup, low 30c temps
 
You have 3 sticks of 512mb ram? That wouldn't let you run in DDR Mode... Remove a stick and try again. Also, try loosening your memory timings a bit.
 
DDR? you mean dual-channel... trust me, its running in dual channel. 3 sticks will run in dual channel.

as far as loosening the timings, there should be no need to. these sticks should run at ddr400 speeds no problem, and I haven't touched the timings at all.

I guess my next step is to see if my stock settings pass a prime test, and if not, start singling out ram sticks... what a pain in the ass.
 
So... What motherboard are you using that lets you use 3 pieces of memory in dual-channel mode? :confused:

Otherwise, loosen the timings anyway. Whether or not the RAM is SUPPOSED to do it is not the issue. Loosening the timings will solve more problems than you could imagine, regardless of the speeds.

How are the chipset temps?

What kind of cooling are you running? That's some pretty high voltage...
 
Actually, he can use three sticks if it's an Nforce 2 motherboard. I'm running a shuttle an35 ultra with three sticks ATM.
 
The key point is that if you use 1 or 3 dimms, it's not running in dual-channel but only in single-channel. To run in dual-channel, you must use pairs of dimms.
 
Actually what Neo_Granzon said. You can run dual channel in an nforce2 motherboard, hence me running 3x512 in dualchannel in my abit nf7s because the first two slots are considered to be channel #1 and the 3rd is channel #2.

Back to my other point, If I'm already getting memory errors when the modules are running 80mhz slower than they are rated for, then im not going to loosen timings so they work. I'm narrowing them down as we speak, took them all out and I'm running different combinations to see if I have a bad stick.
 
try one stick at a time ?


and "maybe" 2 of the dimms are running in dual channel, but not all 3, it is not physically possible i dont recall

yes dimm 1+3 2+4 if 2 or all 4 are filled it is all dual channel.

I dont beleive you can say run 2 x 256mb in 1&3 and 1 512 in 2 or 4 and it works as dual channel.

Sorry, cant just let go cause it could miss-lead people.
 
Seriously, your system will NOT run 3 sticks of memory in dual-channel mode, no matter how adamantly you seem to believe it will.

Mr Guv is exactly right... RAM must be installed in even numbers to run dual-channel... Hence, why it's not called 'tri-channel'. NF1,2,3 or 4, dual channel doesn't exist without 2 or 4 modules.

If you don't believe us, look it up... But you're not running dual-channel, it's technically impossible.

And, Neo - no one said he can't run 3 sticks of RAM - it's just not going to run in dual-channel.

As for the memory errors, how is the process going? With one removed, does prime still crash, or haven't you gotten that far yet?

As for loosening the timings - it wasn't suggested as a long-term solution, it was suggested for troubleshooting purposes.

You ask for suggestions, and we're trying to help... But you won't take those suggestions. Try some of them out, you may save yourself a ton of time and frustration... Wasn't that the point of this thread in the first place?
 
DDR? you mean dual-channel... trust me, its running in dual channel. 3 sticks will run in dual channel.
Click to expand...

Yeah sorry :) It was late. Replace DDR with Dual Channel in that, and I still stick beside what I said. :rolleyes:

Supposedly, from what I've read, the 3 stick Dual Channel "phenomenon" only works under certain conditions however! Such as the following:

Slot 1: 256mb
Slot 2: 256mb

Slot 3: 512mb

The first 2 slots combine their ram resources and the board reads them as one *bank*.

The 3rd slot (which is the 2nd slot in Dual Channel mode) has a stick with the same capacity as the first 2 slots combined, allowing the board to run in DC.

I could be wrong, but this is what google tells me :D

It's also physically impossible for 2 Slots to run in DC, while the other slot runs in single channel mode... That just can't work.
 
Ok then, I guess my system and the programs that tell me I'm running dual channel are wrong. So how do I actually find out if its running 128bit mode or not?

Anyway, So I pulled out two sticks and ran prime last night with my FSB @ 200, voltage @ 1.675, Memory 1x 512 @ stock 2.6v with a 5:4 divider.

Prime ran flawlessly through the night and through the morning.. 10 hours, so That was good. I rebooted and changed my ram divider to 1:1, so now it's running at its rated speed.

Ran prime and left, came home, prime errored at 2 hours 20 minutes with an error I haven't seen before: FATAL ERROR: Final result was F8DCC1B, expected: 7991161C

anyone know if thats cpu or memory related? I'll try CPU at 1.7v

Also, anyone know if 2.6v is supposed to be the stock voltage for corsair valueselect pc3200?

edit: So I just did some research and on newegg it says the ram runs at 2.5v stock.. Well my motherboard only goes down to 2.6 and the memory is actually running at 2.68 - 2.7.
Could this cause problems?
 
Doubtful that the slight voltage increase would cause the problem, but there IS ram out there that hate higher voltages. It usually does the opposite, helps.
 
Ok update time. So I ran memtest on each stick of ram individually.
The first stick passed 2 times, and the second one failed first pass at test 6, 000134936ac at 308.1mb, but it ran 3 more times through memtest with no errors.
Third stick ran 8 times, no errors.

Also, for kicks I booted up with all 3 sticks in. Memtest reported dual channel or 128bit.. so I'm not sure what that means, but every program says I'm running dual channel.

I guess I'll try a prime test with the bad module out and see what happens.
 
You can find details on the dual-channel with three sticks by reading page 47 in the an35n ultra manual.
 
Neo_Granzon said:
You can find details on the dual-channel with three sticks by reading page 47 in the an35n ultra manual.
Click to expand...


okay, thought so - i did recall sometime ago reading about that the 256+256+512 deal but wasnt sure if it was true - now we know! :D
 
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