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Testing > 4GB Memory?

M

mikeblas

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - May 2006
Joined
Jun 26, 2004
Messages
12,777
I have a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P board with eight gigs of memory. The machine has had intermittent blue screens ever since I built it. I first blamed the issue on incorrect drivers; once they were corrected, the problems went away for a while. When they reappeared, I figured they were caused by a failing USB memory card reader. Removing that peripheral caused the problems to disappear for a while -- and then reappear. I had planned to upgrade the graphics card anyhow, and after I did so the problems went away ... only to reappear again.

After analyzing a few of the newest crash dumps in WinDbg, I'm finding that there's really no pattern to them; they don't occur in a consistent module or driver. A few of the crashes fail the module corruption check on various modules, which implies a problem with flaky memory.

I see that MemTest86+ still doesn't test memory past 4 gigs, and surprisingly the Windows Memory Diagnostic program doesn't, either. Is there an application available which will test more than four gigs of memory, or will I have to shuffle DIMMs around?
 
mikeblas said:
I have a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P board with eight gigs of memory. The machine has had intermittent blue screens ever since I built it. I first blamed the issue on incorrect drivers; once they were corrected, the problems went away for a while. When they reappeared, I figured they were caused by a failing USB memory card reader. Removing that peripheral caused the problems to disappear for a while -- and then reappear. I had planned to upgrade the graphics card anyhow, and after I did so the problems went away ... only to reappear again.

After analyzing a few of the newest crash dumps in WinDbg, I'm finding that there's really no pattern to them; they don't occur in a consistent module or driver. A few of the crashes fail the module corruption check on various modules, which implies a problem with flaky memory.

I see that MemTest86+ still doesn't test memory past 4 gigs, and surprisingly the Windows Memory Diagnostic program doesn't, either. Is there an application available which will test more than four gigs of memory, or will I have to shuffle DIMMs around?
Click to expand...

Hm? MemTest86+ tested all 6GB of my RAM fine. Sure you used the latest version?
 
I haven't used it in a long while; my understanding is that it's a 32-bit program and can't address memory beyond 4 gigs. I can't find anything in the documentation that says it does (or does not, actually) handle memory over four gigs.
 
If you think you have a memory issue you should be testing sticks 1 by 1. Its a pain but it also makes sure that the memory is working correctly and there isn't an issue with the board communicating with all the slots or just a flaky DIMM slot.
 
Memtest86+ (now at version 4.00, by the way) is 32bit, and uses PAE. Windows PAE is limited to 64GB, so Memtest86+ is limited to 64GB. Those of you with more than 64GB (how many of you can there be?) will have to wait for them to make a 64bit version of Memtest86+.

I found this info on the official Memtest86+ forum:

http://forum.canardpc.com/showthread.php?t=29920
 
I don't know the upper limit of memtest, but you can go beyond 64GB with PAE depending on the CPU.
 
_k_ said:
If you think you have a memory issue you should be testing sticks 1 by 1. Its a pain but it also makes sure that the memory is working correctly and there isn't an issue with the board communicating with all the slots or just a flaky DIMM slot.
Click to expand...

QFT
 
Do you guys run MemTest 86+ within Windows? I use the one bundled in UBCD (runs in DOS) and haven't had any problems testing all 8GB of my RAM (all four 2GB sticks installed in the motherboard).
 
IsLNdbOi said:
Do you guys run MemTest 86+ within Windows? I use the one bundled in UBCD (runs in DOS) and haven't had any problems testing all 8GB of my RAM (all four 2GB sticks installed in the motherboard).
Click to expand...

Memtest is DOS only. If you are having odd issues, be sure to test each module individually.
 
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