Memtest?

[imported_browsing]

I popped two sticks of corsair xms2 6400 I got on the cheap into my P5W DH Deluxe. It's reading it as 3.2, which is fine, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't bad before it runs out of returnability. Since it's reading as 3.2, should I be running memtest on each stick independently or am I good with a solid 10+ hours with both at the same time? What would you suggest? Also, anyone have experience with the voltage and latency on these things? I've got it manual at 2.0v with 4-4-4-12 timing and it seems fine. It's been a long time since I did anything in the bios.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

You should read the first sentence on the sticky of this board.

Let me guess... you're either using XP 32bit or Vista 32bit. And your videocard probably has 512g of vram, perhaps?

You should read up on the difference between 32bit OS and 64bit OS when it comes to memory.

Very best,

 

[imported_browsing]

I wasn't confused as to why only a specific amount of Ram was showing up, I was just wondering if I should be testing the sticks independently since the 32bit doesn't fully support them. I didn't want any surprises later down the road if a few hours of testing would have cleared it up. If that's spelled out in the sticky, I'm sorry for the double post and a mod can delete this.

 

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

Gotcha; no worries. Another way you can test it is to use another OS. A distro of Linux, for example, that boots from a LiveCD (doesn't get installed, no worries about bothering with your system; it just loads into memory). Then checking out the memory in Linux--well capable of checking out tons of RAM, unlike 32bit windows. Just a thought. Otherwise, you could run Memtest overnight to make sure the memory works; it's just displaying off, since you're likely using 32bit windows and have a good chunk of video ram on your videocard that is addressed.

Very best,

 

[Denithor]

C'mon, MVX, if you're going to give advice, at least make it useful...

Memtest86 runs before Windows ever loads and should be set up to probe for the total memory installed (no 3.2GB limits here). It will test all 4GB (or 6GB or 8GB or whatever you have installed) fully.

Now, one note: if memtest gives a clean bill to both sticks together, you're good to go. If it finds errors it won't tell you which stick is bad. But since you probably bought these sticks as a pair you would RMA both, not one, so this shouldn't be an issue (if errors are found at all you RMA both).

 

[imported_browsing]

Thanks for the advice guys. I ran the sticks together for 10 hours in memtest, no problems. Ran the first stick by itself for 18+ hours with no problems. Ran the second stick by itself and it froze/rebooted in memtest every time between 2 and 12 minutes into testing. So I figure I'll have to RMA the set. Does that seem like the right choice? I'd hate to start having memory errors corrupt things down the line because I didn't take the time to independently test. I hate that I'll have to send back both since one stick seems fine but I understand that it is better to have the match.