Help with possible bad CPU or RAM

I have a question that seriously needs answering. It's more along the nature of problem solving.
Recently I took a gamble and purchased an ASUS A7V, T-Bird 800MHz, and PC133 ram from a friend because he was having problems with it and was fed up with it. I Hoped I would be able to figure out what the problem is, but I need the advice of someone wiser than I.
The problems I'm having here are exclusively with games. This system runs great in windows, but as soon as I fire up a game, it straight out freezes. I know it has to be one of two things, the cpu, or the ram. I know this because my system ran perfect before the addition, so all my peripherals are OK. I've left out cooling, because I have two case fans... and a huge heatsink/fan combo on the athlon. Power cannot be it either... as I'm running it on a 300watt supply and my friend was running it on a 350watt and still having the problems. The board cannot be bad either because my friend bought another one of the same board and it had the same problem, so he bought a similar board by another manufacturer and it STILL did the same thing. I read somewhere that bad RAM will cause the system to freeze, and it's only freezing during games (levels of high stress) but I may be remembering that wrong. In your honest opinion, do you think my RAM or CPU is bad? I know it cant be the graphics card, because between the two of us, we've tried 7 different cards (Geforce2, Geforce2 MX, Geforce, Radeon, G400, and Tnt2) Sorry for such a rambling letter, and Thank you in advance for your time

also don't forget to install the latest VIA 4in1 drivers (4.26 i think)

I would set some BIOS settings to the most reliable modes (e.g. DRAM to Normal timing, Interleave disabled, Page Mode disabled, AGP 4X disabled, AGP Fast Writes disabled, Fast Command Decode (if availabe) disabled, Enhanced Chip Performance (if available) disabled. Set the PCI setting to defaults. This should make the motherboard the most stable possible and you can then address other potential problems.

Next, get all your drivers up-to-date. Download the lastest Via 4-in-1 and AGP Bus drivers. 4.25a is the latest official release for the former. I can't recall what the latest version is for the AGP Bus. Choose the Geforce Card for now. I know the drivers available are stable and mature. Use the nVidia reference driver, Detonator 3, version 6.31 (the last official release). Uninstall the old video drivers if you can.

Lastly, Install or re-install DirectX 7a. If you are already using DirectX 8 then you will have re-install that because it is difficult to go back. I suggest 7a because some people are complaining of issues with DirectX 8 and you don't want to worry about that yet.

I recommend you do all this from a clean install of Windows 98SE but use Windows ME or 2000 if you prefer. If you don't want to re-install Windows, it's up to you. If you do use Windows 2000, AMD AGP patch. See one of my other messages at http://forumz.tomshardware.com/mod [...] d=1&code=1

If after you do all this and still have problems, look for a BIOS update for your motherboard as a last resort. I, generally, don't recommend BIOS updates unless they specifically address problems that one is having or the manufacturer SAYS the update IS necessary.

Good luck!

Your PC133 should says 7.5T (133Mhz) or 7T (143Mhz) if it is 8T or 10T then it is not PC133 and won't be stable. All above advice is good.

However I have,
Duron 650 O/C to 900,
A7V, VIA_4in1_4.25a, BIOS_Load Default, only change CAS2
128MB_PC133_7.5ns_C2,
GF1DDR, Creative 6.34a
WinME,
no problems. Good Luck to you.

and I am interested to know how are you getting along later?

Best regards
cx5

DirectX 8<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by fcchin on 01/03/01 10:58 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

try it like one said with the memory at 100Mhz

***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

Doesn't this sound like a Directx problem guys or not? You may want to try running a benchmark test and see where it dies...maybe it's specific to OpenGL or Direct3D...Wintune 98 even performs a memory test...

Hey you could even run DXdiagnostic and test Direct3d. I'd give this a shot.

BTW I would have the BIOS up to 1004c. I'm currently using 1005a but I'm still not sure if this is the root of my problems.

Asus A7V (bios version 1005a)
AMD Thunderbird 800
128mb Generic PC133 RAM
Creative Annihilator 2 GeForce2
Sound Blaster Live
Maxtor 7200 ATA/66 15gb Hard Drive

Dont worry about it though. I figured out the problem. I went into the BIOS and set the ram speed to 100MHz and it stopped freezing, it seemed like my guess was right, my generic PC133 ram is bad. Thanks for all the help anyway