Abit AB9 Pro Q6600 upgrade and system errors

ducklord

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Oct 19, 2008
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Howdy guys and gals.I need your help and, as surely many people before me have said, I need it fast! On with the show...

I have an Abit AB9 Pro witch up until recently ran a Core 2 Duo 3200 with an Nvidia 7900GT. Three days ago I upgraded to a Q6600 and an AMD/ATi 4850. The PC seemed to work with no problems and the temperatures were, well, good (about 43 idle on each core, 50-53 on load). Then, at some point, InDesign crashed with a memory error. I run it again, continued working and had no problem. At some time later, Directory Opus crashed with an error (don't remember what). Ran it again, went on with no problems. Then, I tried burning some DVDs - and here the problem showed its ugly face.
I have two NEC burners on my PC, and used IMGBurn to write some file compilations. After 2-3 burns, the first of the DVD-Writers started reporting errors while checking the already burned DVDs - that is, the burn went ok but the verification failed. I thought that the device was busted, but then the second one started throwing errors at me in the same fashion.
I ran P95, and its second test (the one that says "checks a lot of memory too") failed each and every time after 2-3 seconds, with a message that it got a decimal while it was waiting for something less than 4 or less than 5.

I thought it was the memory (OCZ Gold 5400). Took out each of the two sticks and ran the test with the other: no luck. I took out and reseated the cooler - although the temps were fine, I thought that maybe it didn't contact the surface of the CPU evenly and when the tests ran it overheated without me noticing. Nada. Took it off and used the stock cooler that came with the Q6600. Nothing. All the while, I was watching the temps with CoreTemp and they never went over 54-56 degrees Celcius.

I took of the quad and replaced it with the older Core 2 Duo. Everything worked fine...

I took the chip back to the shop were I bought it, and although they kept it for checking, they told me that my problems are not CPU based and, with a 99,9% probability, they won't replace it. They refused to run P95 on it, claiming they don't know it (something I quite understand) and said that "they'll run their own tests" - something that actually makes me anxious, since the quad seemed to work without problems in Crysis, Jericho, every game I threw at it, and thus may seem to work correctly.

Any ideas about the problem? Is it the chip, like I think, or are they right and it isn't CPU related? But, if it ain't CPU related, why doesn't it happen with the Core 2 Duo?

I must add that I haven't reinstalled WinXP after the upgrade, just changed the CPU and the GPU, but it seemed to detect everything fine and I didn't meet some critical system error or something. WinXP seemed to work just like they did with the previous CPU, with no problems whatsoever.

The reason I'd like some ideas, comments, anything fast is because, as you may have guessed, in 1-2 days they'll probably give me the same chip back. If it IS a CPU problem (something that they deny), I'd like to have some way of proving it... I feel like I threw 160 euros down the drain... Can somebody help?

Thanks a lot in advance
 

spongebob

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Apr 23, 2004
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What BIOS is your MOBO running? I picked up an early verion of the AB9 Pro with my just-released E6600. My system was having memory related problems. The BIOS that came with the mobo (10 or 11, I believe) had problems reading the memory parameters - upgrading to 14 fixed my problem.

Sorry - that's all I got.
 

ducklord

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Oct 19, 2008
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Thanks for the answer, but... nope... I have the latest (beta!) BIOS, The previous ones did not support the latest processors from Intel...
Gosh, I guess I'm out of luck...