Epox 8RDA+ and Kingston Value Ram...Be Careful!

[conwaymac]

Just a heads up on a situation I came accross yesterday. I have an 8RDA+ motherboard that I was running some Corsair XMS memory on and it ran like a champ....THEN, I aquired 2 - 512MB , PC2700 sticks of Kingston ValueRam that has 6ns Infineon chips on it.
It will not run stable at all..only in PC2100 mode..
I called Kingston and they are sending me 2 new sticks but NOT with Infineon chips on it. They said that they are not compatible with my board...
Plus, the tech also told me that their HyperX series will not work either..
Just thought I'd pass this tidbit along..

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: conwaymac

Plus, the tech also told me that their HyperX series will not work either..
Just thought I'd pass this tidbit along..

:Q The HyperX too? :Q

 

[Zipp]

Well thats good to know cause i'm going to be needing another 256mb stick for my new 8RDA+ when it gets here. I currently have a 256mb stick of mushkin pc2100 memory and I was going to pick up another stick(for now) of maybe Crucial or Samsung pc2700 from Newegg in order to keep the costs down. I was even looking at Kingston ram as well but I guess I better pass on that now.

Thx for the info.

So should I assume that Crucial and Samsung are safe bets?

 

[MARMADUKE]

hmmmmmmm...
When I helped HardwareAddicted set up his 8rda with hyper-x I noticed right away the spd was wrong? I just set it up expert @ the correct timings and as far as I know it was running fine @ 192 FSB? as long as it boots up all ya gotta do is set the timings using expert mode in the 8rda, unless there is another problem i dont know about?

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Zipp
Well thats good to know cause i'm going to be needing another 256mb stick for my new 8RDA+ when it gets here. I currently have a 256mb stick of mushkin pc2100 memory and I was going to pick up another stick(for now) of maybe Crucial or Samsung pc2700 from Newegg in order to keep the costs down. I was even looking at Kingston ram as well but I guess I better pass on that now.

Thx for the info.

So should I assume that Crucial and Samsung are safe bets?

I wouldn't assume that the Crucial is safe. Many people using Crucial PC2700 are having the same problems though they are 512MB modules not 256MB modules. Try to find some TwinMOS or Winbond stuff, people are having great luck with them and they are inexpensive.

 

[MARMADUKE]

LOL..
I had a samsung chip that would not work also!

 

[MARMADUKE]

they must all buy there ram from samsung?

 

[gunblade]

Are you sure hyper -X is not compatible ?
coz i am getting one to test it out on my nf7-s

 

[cvb]

OK,

I picked up 2x256 Corsair XMS 3200LLPT (freakin' 180 bucks). Well, the ONLY way this memory runs on my board is at "By SPD Timiing" and Optimal settings. THAT'S IT. When I try to set up things manually - EXPERT - I get NO POST, can't even go to BIOS.

This is insane!!!

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: cvb
OK,

I picked up 2x256 Corsair XMS 3200LLPT (freakin' 180 bucks). Well, the ONLY way this memory runs on my board is at "By SPD Timiing" and Optimal settings. THAT'S IT. When I try to set up things manually - EXPERT - I get NO POST, can't even go to BIOS.

This is insane!!!

Maybe your board has a problem cvb. You have better RAM than I do and I can run mine over 400MHz DDR in expert mode at 5-2-2-2.0...

 

[cvb]

I think you might be right....

 

[MARMADUKE]

Corsair XMS 3200LLPT=NO GOOD!
look @ my post for memoryhere

 

[Zipp]

I cant believe that this board is that picky about memory. I mean i thought people were just talking about the generic and low grade stuff.

So even if you don't overclock and or just lightly overclock that this motherboard will be unstable with many "brand name" memory sticks?

Or are you guys just talking about when you do the heavy overclocking?

 

[cvb]

I do not overclock at all. It works fine with the expensive memory, but the pain to find that sweet spot where it works at all is INSANE!

 

[HardwareAddicted]

Originally posted by: SeekingTao

Originally posted by: conwaymac

Plus, the tech also told me that their HyperX series will not work either..
Just thought I'd pass this tidbit along..

:Q The HyperX too? :Q

Ok... MARMADUKE was kind enough to help me today... and I have Hyper X in my Epox 8RDA+

Epox 8RDA+ (of course)
2100+
IBM 60 7200
2 sticks of Kingston Hyper X PC2700
GeForce 3 Gainward Ti-200 128mb
Lite-On DVD
Lite-ON 52x24x52
XP Pro
Maxtop case w/Q-Max PSU (Very surprising)

All of this is available on NewEgg.com

With MARMADUKE's help... (you da man) I now have it running as follows :

9.5 x 182 for 2100+ (no voltage bump)
6-3-3-2.5 ram timings
Note: Ram setting are at 100% in the bios....

So I would say that maybe we have 2 different chips on these sticks .... I'll pull off the sink in the morning and let ya'll know what it says.

~ Mark

 

[cvb]

So this review site discovered something that I knew for the last two weeks. 8RDA+ is WEIRD!!! These guys are describing my situation exactly. So 8RDA+ doesn't work with Kingstom ValueRam 2700, it doesn't work with Corsair XMS 3200LLPT. What the heck?!

Link to Ninjalane article

You may have noticed that we used Corsair TwinX paired memory for this review and even though this is some of the fastest memory you can buy it would appear to be too fast for the Epox bios to handle. Here is the situation. If you start the board from a CMOS reset with the TwinX installed you will get an O1 error on the digital display, and the system won't boot. nVidia is aware of the problem and has left it up to the motherboard mfgs to fix. Having flashed to the latest Epox BIOS (3/5/2003) and not seeing an improvement we can only conclude that Epox doesn't see this as a major problem.

There are two work arounds to this situation; the first involves taking the TwinX out of the board and booting with a slower stick of ram. Once you enter the bios you can then shutdown and boot back up with the TwinX installed. The other option is a little easier and involves booting with all of the memory banks filled using one module of a slower speed. The BIOS will then see the combined memory as being slower and allow it to boot. As you can imagine this can be very tedious and time consuming since many attempts to overclock will fail requiring a CMOS reset.

 

[cvb]

Also, I found another weird thing about this board. I disabled the "APIC Mode" feature in "Advanced BIOS" and WinXP simply stopped booting up! WHY?!!!!! It freezes on the mup.sys if I try to launch it in safe mode...

According to EPOX's manual APIC is supposed to provide symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) for Intel Pentium chips. WTF?! What Pentium chips on Nforce2? Also, "Disabled" is supposed to be a default option, yet factory-coded options Enable this thing.

I'm about ready to give up on this board, seriously...

 

[FluxCap]

I thought this was an nForce 2-wide problem , as many have posted? I have one stick of Kingston Hyper-X 512 and it has been perfect so far, even overclocking. My MB is the Abit NF7-S v1.2 However, I have seen confirmed problems with Crucial ram and nForce 2 boards. IS this going to be able to be fixed with a bios update or is the only course of action replacing the ram???

Should I be checking in my BIOS for my ram setting? If so, where? Could it actually be running "not as calculated" just to run?

 

[SpideyCU]

Flux, HyperX seems to work fine, it's Crucial PC2700 and Kingston ValueRAM PC2700 (both the 512 MB sticks) that have issues. I do believe this is an NF2-wide problem since I've seen Asus users complain about it as well.

As for the fix, I really hope a BIOS update will do the trick - I'd really rather not go through the trouble of selling my memory and buying a different brand.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: MARMADUKE
LOL..
I had a samsung chip that would not work also!

With TCC4 Samsung chips on Apacer 6layer PCB 2 512mb sticks they wouldn't run just audioe error codes so I used 256mb Crucial2700 to set the timings for the Apacer manually and then put them in and it's running fine now. I have 2 256mb sticks of Mushkin Black coming and they are hand tested in DC-DDR config before being sent out.

 

[FluxCap]

Well, I ran 3DMark for the first time last night. It froze my PC on the second test. I hope it isn't ram related.

 

[SpideyCU]

How's Prime95 fare Flux? If I go above 157 MHz on my Kingston ValueRAM, Prime95 will fail on or about the 4th/5th iteration.