Does this sound like a memory or motherboard problem?

[OCNewbie]

I have a Biostar motherboard with the nforce 2 chipset. I also, untill recently, had 3 X 256MB sticks of DDR memory. 2 of them were running in dual channel, and the other was just extra memory I suppose. Well, all of a sudden I start getting random reboots, then not so random..... my computer would boot up fine, but when I'd load up a web page, and use the mouse scroll wheel, or click on a link, my computer would instantly reboot, and sometime give me a mem dump error.

So I decided to run Memtest-86, and btw, I ran it when I first installed the memory and it passed fine. Now it always locks up sometime soon into Test #6. Prior to Test #6 it has zero errors. I decided to test each individual memory stick in each of the 3 memory slots on the motherboard. By themselves, they all run fine, they make it through a full pass or 2 of Memtest without problems. But soon as I try to run any of them in dual-channel mode, I get the lock-ups and the failed Memtest.

2 of them were a 512MB DDR kit of Kingston memory, so they're matched and supposed to run dual-channel. The 3rd is a single stick of Crucial.

To add, I currently have the 3rd slot or the 2nd half of the dual-channel slot empty. And I have the First 2 slots closest to the CPU filled with the Kingston units and they together pass memtest fine with no crashes (in non dual-channel configuration).

So given the above info, does this sound like a faulty motherboard, or faulty memory or ? If anybody has any experience with a problem like this, or any ideas, please, I'd love to hear about it, thanks a lot =)

 

[jackschmittusa]

In the bios, set "by SPD" in the memory timings. Then try running with only the stick of Crucial and check the timings. Then try the same thing with the Kingston and check the timings. If they are different, manually set the looser timings and try with all of the sticks in.

 

[OCNewbie]

What does "by SPD" do exactly? I was under the impression that it sets the FSB to the default of the RAM? So if you have PC-3200 in there it'll set the FSB to 200MHz? Which that won't work with my 1.33 GHz T-bird I wouldn't think, not without changing the 10X(?) multiplier.

Also, my mobo has onboard video, the Nforce2 IGP chipset I believe, so dunno if a problem with the onboard video could also be a contributing factor. I have had video glitches in Quake 2, constant glitches that is. I haven't tried any other graphical programs that I can think of.

 

[stevty2889]

Setting the memory to run by spd tells it what timings to use for example 2-2-2-6 which are your cas latency and related timings. Perhaps the stick of crucial runs at different timings than the kingston memory does, so when it may be trying to force the crucial stick to run with timings in isn't compatible with.