Does this mean I need to RMA these highly regarded 2 mo. old buffalo firestix? (micron D9?)

[n7]

FWIW, i use:

vFSB: 1.3V
vNB: 1.45V
vSB: 1.5V
vICH: 1.057V

I can run those voltages for basically everything, whether it's 9x389, or up to around 490 FSB (w/ my previous E6300/E6400) before needing more voltage for the motherboard.

 

[adondeeres]

Here's the update so far.

The crashing/restarting due to opening up multiple files/programs was due to a microsoft security/hotfix/patch since SP2, that wasn't installed.

I was reluctant to do so, but in a last ditched effort, and per advice of cmdrdredd and n7, I raised my vNB to 1.55V from 1.44V. My FSB is at 1.4V, SB is at 1.6V, vcore in BIOS is 1.45V, and vDIMM is 2.1V (firestix's rated voltage).

for DDR2-945 (4:5, 378x9):
At 1.45V vNB, I was only stable for 2-2.25hr with orthos blend (16+hrs stable with orthos small fft). However, at 1.55V vNB, I was stable for orthos blend 8.75 hours (16+ hrs stable with orthos small fft). Since I'm going to be using this system mainly for video conversion/editing/encoding, I would like to have it orthos blend stable for 16-24 hours, but then again, I'm not sure if encoding a movie would be as "stressful" on my components as running orthos blend.

So at this point, is it more likely my RAM or my motherboard? I initially thought RAM, but I'm beginning to think it's my motherboard (perhaps even both?). Unfortunately I don't have another system that accepts DDR2, so I can't test the sticks out that way. The sticks didn't fail memtest @ DDR2-945 for 7 passes (~8hrs?).

Any one have any suggestions at this point?

Thanks again, everyone.

 

[adondeeres]

I hadn't updated for quite some time and just wanted to give an ending to all of this. I finally got things working a couple weeks ago and think would be good reference for those who have similar specs and might run into the same problems.

I'm running at the specs in my signature and am orthos blend stable for at least 12 hours. The reason I couldn't do DDR2-945 previously was because I changed "write to precharge delay" (the last number) from the default of 11 to 10. 10 limited me to just DDR2-756 on a 378FSB and DDR2-800 on a 266FSB; anything higher would not be orthos stable. However, 11 allowed me to run at least DDR2-945 on a 378FSB, which I'm very happy with. I've tried but was not orthos stable when I decreased either DRAM Write Recovery Time from 6 to 5 or DRAM TRFC from 35 to anything lower.

I'm glad I didn't go through an RMA for these sticks.