Do I have a RAM problem?

VanMcGee

Junior Member
Nov 15, 2000
15
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Please help me diagnose a hardware problem I am having.

I have an AOpen P6 motherboard that was recently flashed to the latest BIOS. I recently upgraded my RAM from PC100 to PC133. My system was previously operating at 112FSB @ 616MHZ (112x5.5). My CPU is a P3 733E (133fsb). I bought the new PC133 ram so that I could run my system at 133 X 5.5 mhz.

Problem is, with my new ram (I removed the pc100 ram of course) Half-Life crashes roughly after 10 minutes or so, and if I try to start it back up it will crash within 2-5 minutes. It doesnt completely shut down, but gives me a dialog box which lets me see the details. It will sometimes say error in dw.dll (or other dll's at times) or say stack dump.

It doesnt crash when I run my system at a lower mhz such as 112x5.5 or 100x5.5.

I'm not sure of the brand name of my RAM.

Thank you for your help.
 

undercover

Senior member
Nov 11, 2000
424
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I have had 3 team mates with the same problem.

I had them remove their cheap ram and everything has been fine.

Do not buy from Tito's BackAlley RAM Store and you will be fine.

Stick to Crucial and Muskin.

 

NelsonMuntz

Golden Member
Jun 14, 2001
1,827
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That is what I was looking for. Your board is a BX board so it does not "officially" support 133 MHz FSB. It can theoretically achieve that speed, but it is considered overclocking and depends on several other things. The fact that it does not support 133 MHz means that there is not a divider for the PCI and AGP slots to keep them running at their normal clock speeds. This means that if you "everclock the processor to 133 MHz FSB (33% oc) you are also overclocking all of your peripheral devices by 33%. This means all of you PCI devices have to be able to handle 44 MHz. Some can and some can't. It also means your video card has to be able to handle it. Again some can and some can't. From the problems you describe, it sounds like your video card can't hack it (locks up). You would have been better buying a PIII at 700 MHz (100 MHz FSB) and overclocking the sucker a little bit.
 

VanMcGee

Junior Member
Nov 15, 2000
15
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Nelson:
Thank you very much. That makes total sense. I originally wanted to get a P3 700 with a 100fsb but one of my friends was selling their 133fsb chip so I just got that (since my board supposedly supported it).

Well, my next question that I wonder is can I mix pc133 and pc100 ram together since I have this extra 256 megs of ram sittin around.

Im gonna try that tonight.
 

VanMcGee

Junior Member
Nov 15, 2000
15
0
0
I have a Matrox G400 Max

Sorry, I guess I should fill out the Anand 'myrig' before I post next time.