New motherboard/ram problem

[Deathblade]

Here are my current specs:

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
AMD AthlonXP 2400+
2 x 512 MB Crucial PC2700 DDR
Asus Radeon 9600XT
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
Windows XP Professional


I just got a new motherboard and ram, installed it all, but now have a problem. When I turn it on everything seems to be working fine (all the fans and lights are on) but when I look at my monitor, the orange light is on, and it doesn't ever change from that. It does this when I have both ram sticks in, but when I only put one in it boots up but freezes after the memory check.

I can get into the bios setup if I'm fast enough, so I'm able to change settings. I think I need to change something with the memory frequency, but I'm not sure what to change:

I have the option of setting the frequency to by spd, 50%, 60%, 66%, 75%, 80%, 83%, 120%, 133%, 150%, 166%, 200%. Since the DDR is PC2700 and runs at 333, what should I set this to?

 

[HvyMtl]

spd is by the little chip on the memory that tells the motherboard what speed it is - yours should tell it 166 (333mhz effective) -
the 50%, 60% etc is in reference to the cpu bu speed - and takes that percentage of the bus speed - (200mhz x 50% = 100mhz memory speed remember DDR does effective speed so set your memory bus speed to 1/2 the speed it claims to be - 166 for your parts - see if that works)
Setting the speed to spd should get you the proper bus speed for your memory.
Dont populate both memory buses ( slots 1 &2) on a nforce 2 ultra chipset until after the os and chipset driver install ( windoze dont know what to do with the dual bus until it is told)
Go out to google and download a memory check program - one that can be used via a floppy so you dont have to go into the os and see if you can get that to check your memory - as bad memory acts exactly like what you are describing - try the memory out on a system that is known to be running well.
double check your agp bus speed - and the agp card install as a loose card can act funny too.

 

[Cinic]

Originally posted by HvyMtl
the 50%, 60% etc is in reference to the cpu bu speed - and takes that percentage of the bus speed - (200mhz x 50% = 100mhz memory speed remember DDR does effective speed so set your memory bus speed to 1/2 the speed it claims to be - 166 for your parts - see if that works)
Setting the speed to spd should get you the proper bus speed for your memory.

IIRC, on this board you set the bus speed to a number that you can type in to the bios and the memory speed is set as a percentage of this. For this setup the bus is 133 and the memory is 166. So if you set the memory to 125%, you'll be at 166. I have a very similar setup and this is how it's currently configured. But I'm also new to this so I may be wrong. Anyone care to confirm what I've said?

 

[Szandor]

If your 2400+ isn't locked you could set the multi lower, set FSB to 166 and memory to 100%\Sync, nForces run much better when FSB and memory are run in sync. I ran my Crucial PC2700 @185FSB\370DDR sync w\6-2-2-2.5 timings on my AN35N Ultra & XP1700+

Regards, Szandor

 

[Iceman_IX]

Sounds like your memory could definitely be bad...I'd check it with Memtest86.