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P4B266 + P4 1.6 hangs at memory test

R

RickH

Senior member
Help!! I have a P4B266 and a P4 1.6 that sometimes hangs after the initial start up beep at the memory test. This is before it detects drives, etc. It will sit for 30 to 120 seconds then go on. It has just started doing this after working fine for several weeks. The P4 1.6 is at 2.1 with the jumpers (standard voltage etc). With W2K should I have the BIOS or the PNP operating system set up the system. I have tried both with no difference. Thanks. R
 
A question: Does it do this only on cold boots such as the first boot after a long period of being shut off? Or does it happen even if it is a restart of the system that has been running?
 
It seems to be relared to the size of the AGP aperature. At 64 MB it's OK, at 128 it hangs. Srange. R
 


<< 128 MB >>

Are you sure?! I thought 64 MB was the most they used? No matter though, I think it would be wise to go back through the BIOS and see if you have some things working that might be hindering the video. You might want to use something like this BIOS guide or even this one to see if you can adjust the settings. One of the more common ones that can cause problems is "Fast Writes". It works well if enabled in some cards and others it can hinder performance. Anyway, that would be my suggestion at this point. BTW, how much memory do you have on your system itself (RAM)?
 
With that much RAM you should be able to comfortably set the AGP aperature @ 128 with no problem. I think the best course would be to check the settings in the BIOS and see if there is something else causing the trouble. Let the BIOS do the settings; not the PNP OS. Also, you might need a driver update for that card. Check for that also.
 
Check this out from Lost Circuits---

AGP Aperture size

The amount of main memory that is allocated for direct memory access (DMA) of the advanced graphics port or DiME (direct memory execution). The hypothetical advantage of the AGP design is that the graphics engine can use the main memory as part of a unified memory architecture (UMA). In this case, the graphics adapter can access textures directly from the main memory (DMA) and, more importantly, process the data directly from and to the main memory, bypassing the on-board graphics memory. This feature requires a certain amount of system memory to be allocated for graphics operations. Too little will result in poor graphics performance, too much will fill up the system memory and take up space required for other operations.

With the increase of on-board graphics memory (currently up to 128 MB on the video card itself) this option has lost its relevance. Were the original recommendations to set the AGP aperture to about ½ of the total system memory, a good approximation now would be:

Total system memory / (video memory [MB] /2)


In other words, if you are running 128 MB system memory and have a 4 MB video card, the optimal AGP aperture would be:
128 MB / (4/2) = 64 MB
For a 8 MB video card, the equation would be:
128 MB / (8/2) = 32 MB
and for a 64 MB video card:
128 MB (64/2) = 4 MB
Please note that this is only an approximation to explain the principle. In real life situation, the AGP aperture should be kept at a minimum of 16 MB for most applications, a few others, particularly benchmarks like 3DMark2000 require at least 32 MB AGP aperture



So if my system memory is 512, divided by the video memory of 128, divided by 2 I should use a aperature value of 8 MB????
 
No. As a matter of fact, look at the last paragraph. "Please note that this is only an approximation to explain the principle. In real life situation, the AGP aperture should be kept at a minimum of 16 MB for most applications, a few others, particularly benchmarks like 3DMark2000 require at least 32 MB AGP aperture "
I would think that 64 would be fine for you. I'm curious, did you increase the memory on the card yourself? If in fact you do have 128MB on that card, why not take it back down to 64 and see what it does?
 
OK, I stand corrected. I think you should set the Aperture size to either 32 or 64 and then run some games to see if there are any consequences either way. I think you should also look into and make sure you have the latest driver for that card. And, not to sound like a broken record, you need to check up on your settings in the BIOS to make sure you are not causing troubles there with the AGP card.
 
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