RAM Could Kill My Rig

[gtoforce]

hi guys
im kinda new in this forum
and having a prob wif my ram ( i think )

my system is currently

AMD Athlon FX-53 (939)
MSI K8N-NEO4 Platinum
GSKILL F1USU2-PC4000 3-4-4-8 2GBHZ
MSI GeForceNX7900GTO
FSP GLN600w

okay
using those rams above, i could only run certain games like Oblivion, Quake 4 or Prey at max settings
however, i could not manage to play other games (mostly newer games and some old games like FEAR)
the system would either auto reboot or the games'll hang (not crash)

i thought it was my gc so i replaced it with my ATI X1950XTX
things were the same

i changed my FX-53 to my FX-57, things too were the same

its only when i changed my Gskill to the legacy Kingston DDR400 that every games work in a breeze

i asked the forums and they said its probably my voltage settings
i have no idea cuz i know nuts on bios settings and tweakings like the FSB hz and the Voltage or Prime1 etc.
can anyone help

only the games didnt work well
other stuffs like photoshop, zipping files, DVD rippings all ok

 

[Mondoman]

...

only the games didnt work well
other stuffs like photoshop, zipping files, DVD rippings all ok

To be fair, unless you run a memory check program like memtest86+, you don't know the other stuff is OK. It could easily be accumulating memory errors and slowly getting corrupted.
Download memtest86+ and create a boot floppy or bootable CD with it, then run at least a couple of cycles through all tests. If you get ANY errors, something's not working right.
Also, with the GSkill, did you manually set any memory speed/timings/voltage, or just use "auto" settings?

 

[gtoforce]

hey
i figured the problem myself
i changed the ddr voltage to 2.6
but it only worked out with one piece of one gig ram

if i put 2 gigs of it
the same reboot and crash things happened in the same games

 

[Mondoman]

With all due respect, if it still does it, then that wasn't the solution.
If Kingston RAM works fine in your system, stick with the Kingston RAM.

 

[Sagekilla]

Download Memtest86+ like Mondoman said before, you'll never know 100% sure if the memory is truly damaged unless you test it. Never assume things when working with computers, because the worst possible things will happen.

 

[gtoforce]

hmm...
okay

so i downloaded memtest86
how do i use it?
and what should i expect?

 

[gtoforce]

okay
i used memtest86 v3.2
and after almost one day of testing
i forgot how many passes
haha

but there never was an error

my friend a hardware specialist could not figure out the problem

i checked the bios
there are 2 problems i noticed in the tab Cell Menu (for msi motherboards)

1) when i put only one stick of that gskill, the ddr speed is 201mhz. but when i put 2, it runs at 167mhz. what does it mean?

2) i checked in the dram configuration and i noticed that even with 2 sticks, i still runs at 2t instead of 1t (this is auto). i manually configured it to 1t and the system wont boot and make sounds which prompted me to reset the bios.hmm...what do u guys think?

 

[elpresidente2075]

You sure you got enough juice to the system? Maybe a power supply that isn't liking to supply its rated amperage is the culprit. This seems to be a common problem that causes some off the wall results...

 

[Mondoman]

okay
i used memtest86 v3.2
and after almost one day of testing
i forgot how many passes
haha

but there never was an error

That's a good start. Now download and run Orthos (or two copies of PRIME95, one per core). This is a tougher test.
...

1) when i put only one stick of that gskill, the ddr speed is 201mhz. but when i put 2, it runs at 167mhz. what does it mean?

With one stick, it is running at DDR-400 (which is a 200MHz clock), but with two sticks, apparently DDR-400 gives errors, so the BIOS chooses DDR-333 (167MHz clock).

2) i checked in the dram configuration and i noticed that even with 2 sticks, i still runs at 2t instead of 1t (this is auto).

Yes, this is because of your MB design. You can't change this.

It sounds to me as though either:
1) The GSkill is not quite compatible with your system or
2) The GSkill is defective

This post may help somewhat:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1249881#1249881

 

[pshrk]

Have you tried updating your BIOS? Worth a try...

Edit: something strange happened the other day to me. I ran memtest for days with no errors but my (older) computer would always hang when compiling large programs like gcc. I had to loosen the timings to a CL of 2.5 instead of 2 and now it is stable. weird.

 

[Mondoman]

memtest86+ is not as tough a test as PRIME95 running in each core (or Orthos), in torture-test mode.

 

[pshrk]

good to know, I thought of trying of that, didn't feel like putting windows on my computer... wonder if they make it or something similar for linux?

 

[mitch074]

I think you could merely try to run it under Wine... Personally I got better results running SuperPI under Linux/Wine than under 'native' Windows. Talk about 'emulation'...
(I know, Wine Is Not an Emulator - it's a compatibility layer)

 

[gtoforce]

okay
i used memtest86 v3.2
and after almost one day of testing
i forgot how many passes
haha

but there never was an error

That's a good start. Now download and run Orthos (or two copies of PRIME95, one per core). This is a tougher test.
...

1) when i put only one stick of that gskill, the ddr speed is 201mhz. but when i put 2, it runs at 167mhz. what does it mean?

With one stick, it is running at DDR-400 (which is a 200MHz clock), but with two sticks, apparently DDR-400 gives errors, so the BIOS chooses DDR-333 (167MHz clock).

2) i checked in the dram configuration and i noticed that even with 2 sticks, i still runs at 2t instead of 1t (this is auto).

Yes, this is because of your MB design. You can't change this.

It sounds to me as though either:
1) The GSkill is not quite compatible with your system or
2) The GSkill is defective

This post may help somewhat:
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1249881#1249881

well for those who suggested the bios update
i already updated it to the latest one using msi live update last 5 days
erm...
the gskill couldt be faulty cuz it runs ok wif my other pc's wic also use msi boards

haha

but i got some new findings
i reset the bios
and i changed one thing
the cl from 2.5 to 3
i thought of changing it to 2 but i read many reviews saying it couldnt run at 2

anyways
i had to smile cuz when i changed that one thing
and tweaked the voltage to 2.70, everything went perfectly fine
neverwinter nights 2 which used to reboot or hang never really caused any problems
similarly with all the other games that had concurrently faced the same problems
haha
what does that mean?

i mean i restart the computer many times and changed the cl to 2.5 and the same problems occured back
but when i changed it back to 3 nothing wrong happened
so what do u guys think?

and yes
i think msi motherboards even the platinum ones or the diamond ones cant really handle the high performance rams
but i'll always stick with this brand cuz i never rma any single items of it
haha
no fanboy meant