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Nvidia 590 and 4x1 Gig crucial Ballistix

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dan442

Member
I have a Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 motherboard with Nvidia 590 chipset and an AMD 5000+ Black Edition CPU.

When running 4x1 Gig of Crucial Ballistix the computer won't shut down properly. The screen goes out, but there are still fans running and the power LED stays on. Pressing the reset button causes the computer to start. The computer operates normally when running 2x1 Gig of memory.

Launching some applications like CPU-Z seems to take longer now as well.

Has anyone ever heard of a problem like this?

Edit:
I have loosened timings, increased NB voltage and vdimm, none of which helped. Has anyone found a way to run 4 sticks on this chipset?
 
Have you raised the voltage?

Have you relaxted timings, including making sure you're not forcing 1T command rate?
 
I haven't changed any voltages, in BIOS it is set to normal, Everest reports 1.95v.

I had 2 Gigs running 4-4-4-10-22 1T, set all timings to auto, installed 2 more dimms and booted. The computer ran fine, so I restarted and dropped the timing back to 4-4-4-10-22 2T. Computer still worked, so I restarted and tried the command rate at 1T. Computer would not boot, motherboard speaker signaled DRAM error. I cleared CMOS, adjusted BIOS settings and rebooted. I ran memtest for a couple of hours and got no errors.

I will try adjusting the voltages (dram and NB) and loosen up the timings to see if it has any effect.

Edit: Adjusting timings and voltages had no effect whatsoever on this issue.
 
I don't know exactly what you've got, but the popular Ballistix are rated for 2.0v, so maybe raising that to 2.1 or so could do it. All RAM is getting power from a single source, so when there's activity, lowering the voltage right then, you need a bit higher voltage setting to keep it up where it needs to be. Add sticks, and you've increased the load, so may need to raise it a little bit higher.

I haven't had to adjust any NB voltages before on A64 boards (just RAM); but I also haven't used quite so new of a nVidia chipset, so YMMV, there. It certainly wouldn't hurt to do it on a small scale for testing (I'd think no more than +0.1v).

Also, you may not be able to run the RAM it at 1T with four sticks. Some motherboards supposedly can, but it's not normal to be able to. However, if you can't, but it runs fine at 2T, then leave it. If you need >2GB, the small performance hit from 2T will be far overshadowed by not having to use the hard drive so much.
 
The computer will not boot with 4 dimms and a 1T command rate, so I have to run 2T.

The SPD EPP on my memory is 2.2v. When I have vdimm set to normal Everest reports 1.95v. I set voltage in BIOS to +.4v, Everest reported 2.24v and the problem persisted.

My northbridge adjustments are normal, +.1, +.2 and +.3. I tried +.1 and +.2, neither of which helped.

So far I've tried loosening the memory timings, increasing vdimm and nb voltage, seperately and all at once. My computer works fine other than not shutting down porperly. I sent an email to Gigabyte tech support, hopefully they will be able to help.
 
dan442, are you overclocking your cpu, lol you probably are since you got the black edition, but try using you cpu at stock speed if its oc'ed. a friend of mine had an older nforce sli board with an a64, and he had to lower his oc by 200mhz in order to get his system stable again when he added 2 more sticks of ram. the athlon 64's have an integrated memory controller, and since its integrated in the cpu itself and not the motherboard, that might be the problem as the memory controller i believe was optimized to be used with 2 sticks of ram and not too great with 4 sticks of ram. you could also try underclocking the ram too.
 
I do have the CPU multiplier set to 14 (stock is 13) to give me 2.8 Ghz with my memory running at 400 mhz. I have had the memory running as high as 500 mhz without problems when using only 2 gigs. BTW all the sticks work fine when there is only 2 of them installed.

I set CPU mult to auto and memory standard to DDR 667, which gave me 2.6/325. Even with increased NB and DRAM voltage I still have the same problem.

Time to start looking at 2x2 gig kits unless someone knows someting I don't.
 
dan442, theres 1 more thing i can suggest, try setting your ram at a very relaxed setting like 667 @ 5-5-5-15-2t 1.8v, with the cpu at stock speed and voltages and see if that helps. try setting the voltage of the cpu @ 1.3v as another guy i know had to do that with his 4600+; it was never stable @1.35v for some reason. hope that helps. otherwise you might have to look at 2x2gb kits.
 
and another thing, are you using vista x64 by any chance? for me when i first built my system, i could only boot with 2 sticks of ram most of the time, where other times i got bsods, until i insatlled a ms patch/hotfix, KB929777. after installing that for me, my system was completely stable and could boot everytime with 4 sticks of ram and then i started overclocking.
 
I hve XP Pro 64 bit OS, I have searched Microsoft for hotfixes and found none. Maybe I should contact their customer suport, it may be a software issue.

When I tried running at DDR 667 I had timing set to auto which gave me 5-5-5-18-24-2T with 4 sticks. I set vdimm at +.3 which Everest reports is 2.14v. The SPD EPP lists 2.2v for the Ballistix. When there is only 2 sticks I have run 500 mhz at 5-5-5-18-24-2T with voltage set to normal, which Everest reports as 1.95v.

When testing at DDR 667 I also raised the NB/PCIE voltage to +.3(max), which automatically raised the SB/PCIE by +.2. I raised the CPU HT-Link to +.3(again max) neither of which had any effect.

BIOS reports normal CPU voltage as 1.3250, Everest shows 1.34v going up to 1.39v under load. I can set the multiplier as high as 15x and have stability with OCCT or Everest. To get it to boot with the multiplier at 16x I have to increase vcore to 1.3750, OCCT will not show stable even with vcore as high as 1.4250.

Right now I am doing stability tests with 2 sticks of ram and decreased vcore. I set CPU multiplier to 15x and vcore to 1.3000v. Everest reports 1.31/1.34v. I lowered it to 1.2750v which is reported as 1.29/1.33v. I am currently running OCCT to test for stability, if that pans out I will try 4 sticks with reduced vcore later.
 
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