Clear Sky killed my Ballistix? (rantish)

S

soulman76

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 18, 2006
Messages
167
(Not sure if I should post this under PC Games or Memory, so it's going here to avoid crossposting, mod please move if needed)

I got Stalker: Clear Sky a few days after it came out, been having a helluva time getting it to run stable. It's fun but buggy as hell. After many a random crash to desktop I got a few blue screen crashes that rebooted the whole system. On one of the crashes my system would no longer boot past post. GREAT! Trial and error helped me figure out that one of the sticks went bad (it's one of a set that I had previously RMA'd).
I remove the bad stick and my system is fine, minus one gb of ram. I dropped all my overclocks just in case.
So ok, I think that maybe it's just fluke, I got a bad RMA and it broke again. So I go through the RMA process and send off the matching set 2x1gb.

Machine is down to 2gb ram, oh well, should still work ok, just slower load times.
Meanwhile I go back to playing Clear Sky and it's still buggy, but I'm able to play it with some trial and error and workarounds (quicksave won't load, so load old save, then hit quickload to avoid CTD). This works for the weekend.

It takes me a few days to get around to getting the RMA sent out since my system is still functional and it's not high pri.
The very day that I send it out, I get home from work and get time to game and it crashes every time I try to load. So I try a few more things and lo and behold, Memtest x86 says another stick of my ram has gone bad and lists the addresses, Windows Mem test was less specific with something like "Hardware errors detected, contact your system manufacturer". So I test the (remaining 2) sticks individually and sure enough, one of them is bad. I tried them in all slots.

So I'm down to 1x1gb stick on my machine, I don't want to RMA this one till the other set comes back since I have no more memory available and I don't really want to go buy more. So I'm not taking any chances by leaving it off unless I need something on it. I have other computers I can use but not for gaming.

Ok now here's the kicker, I have always had the RAM on this machine running stock speeds and voltage, no overclocking it at all. DDR2-800 speed with 4-4-4-12 timing and 2.2v, exactly what the modules list on the side.
I've only been at 4x1gb for a few weeks, upgraded from 2x1gb and played through Stalker: Shadows of Chernobyl (Oblivion Lost mod, great btw) and Crysis with the 4gb in my system with no problems whatsoever.
This only started happening since I installed Stalker Clear Sky.

The ram is 2 matched sets, 2x1gb Ballistix DDR2-800 and 2x1gb Ballistix Tracer DDR2-800, both with the exact same settings. I have good airflow over the ram and when the second one failed, I even had the case open.

Motherboard is an EVGA 680i LT that I have RMA'd for other issues before, all minor. Rest of system specs are in my sig.

My day job is fixing stuff like this, so I know what I'm doing. But this just doesn't make sense.

What gives? :confused::confused::confused:

This is really bugging me, has anyone else had any issues like this?

I have had a suggestion from a co-worker to test the ram in a different machine, which I can do at work tomorrow.

Luckily I got some good books recently I've been meaning to read, and just saw the author at a book signing (Steven Erikson, Malazan Book of the Fallen, anyone?) so I can handle a break from gaming for a bit

 
It seems to me that your memory just died and probably was on it's EOL (end of life) cycle. I suggest to buy G.Skill memory instead because it rules. Or use some cheap 512mb stick of ddr2 and then RMA all your ram back and wait for them to return.
 
The standard Ballistix set I got in January, and the Tracers I got last month. Not end of life.
 
soulman76 said:
The standard Ballistix set I got in January, and the Tracers I got last month. Not end of life.
Click to expand...

The Ballistix are known to have lots of issues. I too suggest G. Skill or OCZ. But I got to admit that does sound like too much of a coincidence that your RAM crapped out as soon as you started playing that game.
 
BX_TECH_GOD said:
The Ballistix are known to have lots of issues. I too suggest G. Skill or OCZ. But I got to admit that does sound like too much of a coincidence that your RAM crapped out as soon as you started playing that game.
Click to expand...


+1 both r good

 
Single sided Ballistix? I have read nothing but bad things about them compared to the old dual sided sticks.

Pony up and buy some different brand ram. I suspect you will be in constant rma land if you continue running the newest Ballistix at 2.2V
 
I think you have the cause/effect completely backwards. Clear Sky is crashing so much because your memory (or controller, or sockets, or motherboard, or power supply) is misbehaving.
 
Surly73 said:
I think you have the cause/effect completely backwards. Clear Sky is crashing so much because your memory (or controller, or sockets, or motherboard, or power supply) is misbehaving.
Click to expand...

Right, I've pretty much determined that, since anything else would be pretty far fetched. But the timing is very suspicious, and hence makes it and interesting read.
I'm currently borrowing some more ram from a friend until I get my RMAs back.

The whole point of this was to see if anyone else has had similar issues specific to Clear Sky and memory failure. It appears I am alone in this as the only responses I've gotten are "Buy different ram". So I'll deal with my memory and hope it doesn't happen again. Thanks for the responses.

 
I've had my occasional CTD+BSOD reboots with stalker, but so far the ones I've run into seem to be related with the game, and not my Corsair memory. I'll run a memtest on them for sure though. I'm on the last level and it keeps bluescreening in the same exact spot.
 
It's possible that S:CS just does something in memory that triggers the problem, and nothing else you run does the same thing. That's why people recommend memtest + another stress test to ensure memory stability.
 
soulman76 said:
Right, I've pretty much determined that, since anything else would be pretty far fetched. But the timing is very suspicious, and hence makes it and interesting read.
I'm currently borrowing some more ram from a friend until I get my RMAs back.

The whole point of this was to see if anyone else has had similar issues specific to Clear Sky and memory failure. It appears I am alone in this as the only responses I've gotten are "Buy different ram". So I'll deal with my memory and hope it doesn't happen again. Thanks for the responses.

Click to expand...

Well, you might feel a little beaten up on, but if you want to be a little scientific, please run memtest86+ overnight (preferably with the bit fade extended test too) and post results.

Remember it might not be your memory itself, but it's likely something in your memory system. It could still be a mobo component.
 
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