nForce2 GeForce4 incompatability issue

[Jeff7181]

Decided to post this here since it has to do with 2 pieces of hardware and doesn't really fit in the video or motherboard forms...

I've heard from a few sources that nForce2 chipsets and GeForce4 video cards don't get along when running dual channel memory. I was having problems that people were describing... 3D games lock up, screen turns white, flashes sometimes, and you're forced to reboot if it doesn't reboot on it's own. The only way I could get rid of this problem was to put my GF4 back at the default setting of 250/444.
Someone mentioned it was because of the dual channel memory controller not getting along with the GF4... so I decided to test it... put my RAM in slots 1 and 2 and ran PCMark to check to see that dual channel was enabled before, and disabled now... RAM score dropped 400 points, so I'm assuming it's disabled now. So I fired up a few games, ran fine... overclocked my video card again to 260/520, fired up a few games again, and viola! No more problems. I tried it at 270/540, which I had only limited sucess with before I got this nForce2 board, and it didn't like that, so I'm now running at 260/520 again.
I guess you have to make a choice... dual channel memory? Or overclock your GF4? I chose to keep my RAM in single channel mode and take the loss in memory bandwidth to increase my FPS in games.

 

[MrEgo]

Thats strange considering that NVIDIA makes GeForce and nForce stuff.

 

[SinfulWeeper]

Your using the latest drivers on both boards?
It would seem to me like a driver issue rather than a imcompatability with each other. That would be like AMD making their 760 chipset incompatable with AXP's. It just makes no sense.

 

[mechBgon]

Out of curiosity, what kind of northbridge cooling do you have (stock, stock + thermal paste, aftermarket passive, aftermarket fan-cooled)? Have you tried any different memory? I see your "Main rig" has two different brands of memory I haven't heard much about (Elixir and Ak-byte) so I wonder if a couple of Samsung Originals would change the ending to your story.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Out of curiosity, what kind of northbridge cooling do you have (stock, stock + thermal paste, aftermarket passive, aftermarket fan-cooled)? Have you tried any different memory? I see your "Main rig" has two different brands of memory I haven't heard much about (Elixir and Ak-byte) so I wonder if a couple of Samsung Originals would change the ending to your story.

Stock heatsink that comes on that board. Barely warm even at 221 Mhz FSB.
I doubt it's the RAM cause I've even tried running it at 100 mhz and it has no effect on the situation. The only thing that effects it is running in single channel mode vs. dual channel. I'm still testing it to see if it's stable, I think I'll tune down my CPU a little bit to make sure some instability isn't being caused by that.

I'm using the 43.xx Detonators and... well... hmmmm... maybe I don't have the latest drivers for my motherboard crap... but from what I heard about some IDE drivers, I'm not sure I want to change them... maybe I'll check out nVidia's site and see if they have any "known issues" posted there.