A7M266 and MX300

[Andrigaar]

Yea, I know the soundcard is a bit dated, but it still works fine damnit!

Or so, it did anyway. Up until this afternoon when I got my a7m266 a mere month after ordering it. Now the card causes crashes when windows loads unless no drivers recognize it. Though as a consolation, 98 has so far decided to ignore it most of the time.

Also as a bust, I either got ripped off from memplus.com or the motherboard doesn't like my ram much. My 'so called' Micron DDR 256MB 2100 seems to show up as 128M 1600. I'd love some help, or witty sarcasm to ease me through my pain on the RAM deal. To add to the annoyance, the email I sent to the sites admin was returned a few minutes later with a "no such user" tagline. Talk about adding salt to the wound... order components for a system, get the mobo a month after the order, a 3 past the arrival of my other orders, only to discover that I have a conflict with the ram, or I was jacked by some would retailer!

For the sake of fairness, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now and say it's either the mobo or mislabed ram. If such turns out to be of another wind, I won't be so kind ever again.

 

[Rainsford]

My only suggestion would be to only order from reliable companies, check out Reseller Ratings for info on the best companies. I know it's closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, but...

Now, I do have a few helpfull hints however. First of all, I had a Turtle Beach Monetego A3DXtreme and it worked great until I got my A7V motherboard, that's when I found out that newer Thunderbird/Duron/Athlon chipsets don't seem to like older hardware all that well. So, my suggestion would be to try a newer soundcard and see if you still have all those problems. Also, check the manufacturer's website, Turtle Beach said right on their site that my card wouldn't work with Athlon systems.

Now, about the RAM, I have no idea what the problem is other than that you got a raw deal from a vendor. I'd send it back (if you can) and get some nice Crucial DDR directly from Curcial.com. That's my only suggestion.

 

[Andrigaar]

Thanks. I was suspecting a conflict from the start, but wanted a more informed opinion or reasoning before I did anything.

As for the RAM, I'm thinking I got jacked, end of fable. More of a Grimm's story than anythign else
I'll have to yell at the guy on Monday, the email still doesn't work and no one would answer the phone earlier. But oh man.. I am not a happy camper at the moment. The A7M266 seems pretty keen so far, but the lack of a multiplier is slowly driving me insane. I can run the bus at 100MHz, and defeat the purpose of the DDR RAM, or I can jack it to 133MHz and wind up with a 1.3GHz cpu that works till it hits about 120-30 degrees F and crashes. Stupid forced 10x multiplier If I didn't suck so much with a soldering iron I'd install that multiplier mod as soon as I could get the piece.

Once again thanks. Though I didn't check the seller ratings before I wrote this, I'll be looking at it right after.