Older system not overclocking as before

[Hardball]

I recently added memory to an older system I have and it will no longer run at the overclocked settings that it has had for the past 5+ years. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8INXP, which uses the E7205 chipset with ICH4. The cpu is a socket 478 P4 Intel Northwood 2.66Ghz (20x133fsb stock) that I have had mildly overclocked to 3Ghz (20x150fsb) for several years. The memory was 1GB (4 sticks/ 2 matched sets of Corsair 256MB LL 2-2-2-5) until I upgraded to G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F1-3200PHU2-2GBNS yesterday.

I ran Memtest86+ on both sticks of G.Skill individually as well as together and they passed everything with no errors. When I tried to set the fsb to 150, it hard locked the bios. It will not run at this setting anymore. I thought that having all 4 dimm slots filled was more stressful to a system than just 2 of them. Does the density of each stick (1GB/stick versus 256MB/stick) have any bearing on this?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Are you reducing the memory divider to compensate for the fsb increase?

 

[Hardball]

No. It's running 1:1 with fsb. There is no memory divider setting. It also ran at 1:1 with the prior memory with the fsb at 150. Both sets of memory are pc3200 ddr 400. That's the thing. The 4 stick setup ran for years at the 150 fsb setting, but these new G.Skill's don't seem to be able to. This is strange because they are rated to run at a fsb of 200 with 2.5-3-3-6. At the current setting of fsb 133 they are doing 2.5-2-2-5.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

This is before my time... but are you sure they're compatible with your mobo?

Is it 400MHz ram, or 200MHz? DDR doesn't double pump, so if it's 200MHz with 1:1 wouldn't it require a 200 fsb to hit rated specs?

And to be clear they work fine without the fsb overclock? If so you could try loosening the timings back to rated specs.

 

[Hardball]

They are compatible. It's 184pin DDR memory. I think they are rated at 200mhz max which requires 2.7v to run and has timings of 2.5-3-3-6 at that speed. I think that is why the timings are so low at the slower speed of 133 that I'm at. As far as the double pump goes, I think because it's called DDR400, it's because it maxes out at 200mhz, and it's DDR, hence the 400 rating.

My CPU won't get anywhere near a 200 fsb, but it has shown to be smooth and cool temp-wise at the 150fsb mark, but I can't even get that with the new memory installed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

IDDR doesn't double pump

No, of course not. That's only the reason why they call it DOUBLE data rate. :smacks forehead:

 

[BallaTheFeared]

lol nerds

 

[Zap]

No. It's running 1:1 with fsb. There is no memory divider setting. It also ran at 1:1 with the prior memory with the fsb at 150. Both sets of memory are pc3200 ddr 400. That's the thing. The 4 stick setup ran for years at the 150 fsb setting, but these new G.Skill's don't seem to be able to. This is strange because they are rated to run at a fsb of 200 with 2.5-3-3-6. At the current setting of fsb 133 they are doing 2.5-2-2-5.

There's your culprit. The memory controller uses a multiplier to run off the FSB. You are overclocking your RAM and maybe the new stuff doesn't overclock as well as the old stuff. To verify, just toss in the old stuff and see if it can hit 150MHz FSB again.

 

[Hardball]

Zap- Is it considered overclocking when the new memory is able to run at 200MHz, but I am only trying to get it to 150 (currently at stock 133MHz)? It would seem that 150 is still well below what these G.Skill's are rated to run at. It should not stress them at all, right? There are no settings in my bios for memory dividers or for manually changing the timings of the memory.

Again, the new memory is rated for 200MHz operation at 2.7v with 2.5-3-3-6 timings. They seem to automatically adjust to lower/tighter timings (currently at 2.5-2-2-5 at the 133MHZ fsb) when they are run at the slower fsb settings. I have also tried upping voltage to the dimms, but to no avail. The bios has +.1,.2, and .3 voltage adjustments for the default 2.5v that go to the dimms. I have tried them all.