RAM upgrade issue

[tickyour]

Hello everyone.

I recently decided to upgrade my system to 1GB of ram. I purchased Mushkin 2x 3200 512mb. I upgraded from PNY 2700 512mb.

After putting the RAM in, the system has become extremely unstable. It can not operate stabily under stock speeds of 200mhz FSB. I can barely make it stable @ 166mhz, at very relaxed timings. This is very strange since my 2700 ram was stable @ 210mhz FSB.

I played around with voltage (2.6 to 2.7v) CPU voltage, pretty much any imaginable configuration of timings, nothing seems to help...
My system is as follows mobo:
Epox 8rda+
CPU Amd 2500+ XP
nVidia 6800oc 128mb
Thermaltalke 420W PSU
WD 80GB
Maxtor 40GB

I'm at a complete loss, I hope someone can give me some light into othis situation. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[meltdown75]

Hi tickyour, welcome to the forums.

The following is taken from www.cluboverclocker.com 's review of the 8RDA+...

WARNING: DDR Timing Issues

While testing the 8RDA and 8RDA+, I have discovered that both boards have a DDR memory timing issue. The problem is when you first pull the board out of the box, or reset the bios settings, the default DDR timings are extremely high and are not compatible with memory such as Low Latency XMS memory from Corsair or Enhanced Latency memory from OCZ. This issue can be easily changed with a bios update to make the default memory timing a little lower so that it is compatible with both high and low latency DDR memory. Until EPoX comes out with a newer bios update that addresses this issue, the only way around it is to use a generic stick or high latency DDR memory on first boot. You simply change the memory timings and CAS Latency to a setting that is compatible with your particular memory, shut down, remove the generic memory, install your high performance memory, and then boot. This can be an extremely big pain in the back side when overclocking because many times you have to clear the bios settings when your overclocking setting fail. Anyway, I just hope EPoX takes notice of this issue and releases a new bios update ASAP.

Although this is not a serious issue once you are aware of it and don't mind swapping out memory to get the machine to boot up for the first time. Nevertheless, this problem is very annoying and I know of several people who have RMAed this board because of this issue.

... ergo if you haven't updated the BIOS yet, do so and see if that solves your problem. Also make sure you are running your memory and cpu fsb in sync, ie. if your cpu bus is set @ 166mhz, ensure your ram is also @ 166mhz for best performance. hope this helps.