Ok folks before I go out and purchase another 2GB worth of DDR 400 I want to make sure that is what is wrong with my system. As of late I have been getting a BSOD once or twice a day. Sometimes I'm told that it's a device driver (Windebug points at ntfs.sys when this happens) and sometimes I'm told that it is memory corruption. Recently I have done a complete reformat of the system to make sure it wasn't some lingering driver and it still occurs. The only possibilities that occur to me are as follow:
1) The video card may be involved in some way. Recently I noticed some artifacting in some games although I don't seem to see it anymore. I have still ordered a replacement just in case however.
2) One or more of my modules is going bad. The thing that throws me is that I can run memtest86+ overnight and it does not pick up a single error. I've run it through 6 passes of Microsoft's memory tester and it doesn't show any errors. I'm aware that it is possible for failing memory to pass these tests but I find it somewhat hard to believe that it continues to pass after hours of testing.
Is it possible that brand mixing is causing problems? Here's what I have in each slot:
Slot 1: Infineon PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5v
Slot 2: Samsung PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5v
Slot 3: Infineon PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5v
Slot 4: Infineon PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5
These are all 512MB modules and they show as running in dual channel mode according to BIOS & CPU-Z. This is in a Dimension 8300 which uses an Intel 875P chipset if this helps at all.
EDIT: After looking at the manual for the machine I have found that I did not install the matched pairs properly. So Slot 1 & 2 are now Infineon while Slot 3 & 4 are Samsung. Whether or not this will resolve the issue is yet to be seen but I would still like some input.
1) The video card may be involved in some way. Recently I noticed some artifacting in some games although I don't seem to see it anymore. I have still ordered a replacement just in case however.
2) One or more of my modules is going bad. The thing that throws me is that I can run memtest86+ overnight and it does not pick up a single error. I've run it through 6 passes of Microsoft's memory tester and it doesn't show any errors. I'm aware that it is possible for failing memory to pass these tests but I find it somewhat hard to believe that it continues to pass after hours of testing.
Is it possible that brand mixing is causing problems? Here's what I have in each slot:
Slot 1: Infineon PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5v
Slot 2: Samsung PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5v
Slot 3: Infineon PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5v
Slot 4: Infineon PC-3200 CL 3 3-3-8 2.5
These are all 512MB modules and they show as running in dual channel mode according to BIOS & CPU-Z. This is in a Dimension 8300 which uses an Intel 875P chipset if this helps at all.
EDIT: After looking at the manual for the machine I have found that I did not install the matched pairs properly. So Slot 1 & 2 are now Infineon while Slot 3 & 4 are Samsung. Whether or not this will resolve the issue is yet to be seen but I would still like some input.
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