Strange problems MSI K7N2 nForce2

[sokeravia]

I recently got this MSI K7N2 nForce2 board and paired it with an Athlon XP 2100+ and everything seems to work great...except (you knew that was coming right?) that whenever I go into certain 3D games it will play fine for a while and then randomly and without warning drop me back out to the desktop.

At first I thought it was a video card problem since I had gotten a new Asus V9280 Geforce4 at the same time, but I went back to my Radeon and have the same problems.

I have read in a couple places on the net that this board and the nForce2 in general are really picky about RAM (especially 512mb sticks like what I've got), but I haven't seen anyone experiencing this exact problem. The system is 100% rock solid as long as I'm not in High Heat 2003 or Madden 2003 or most any 3D game. The memory I'm using is a 512mb PC2700 Crucial DIMM that I got when I thought I was going to get a KT333 board instead of this one, otherwise I would have gotten 2x256mb to take advantage of the nForce2's dual channel. Has anyone seen a problem like this caused by a memory incompatibility?

I've updated the BIOS to the latest 3.4 from MSI.

I have an Antec TruePower 330W P/S and a Vantec Aeroflow HSF that seems to keep the CPU plenty cool.

If you need any more information I'll be happy to provide it.

-Sokie

 

[jackschmittusa]

It is unlikely the ram if everything else runs "rock solid" and Crucial tests all ram sticks. Since it happens with 2 different vid cards, I would guess that it is a Windows problem or a bios setting. Does your os have all of the current updates, patches, DirectX, mobo drivers installed? In the bios, is "agp fastwrite = disabled", "agp aperture = 128mb". If not, try these settings.

 

[sokeravia]

Well it happened on my old Windows XP install so I did reinstall and after going through all the updates it still has the same problem. When I had my Nvidia card in I tried at least 6 different versions of the drivers off of their website.

The thing about the RAM is that on Nvidia's website they have a (short) list of certified compatible ram, and the Micron they have on there has a slightly different model number than the chips on my Crucial stick.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/nForceMemoryCompatability/lstnForceMemoryCompatibility.asp

The 512mb Micron that they list is MT16VDDT6464AG-335B4, I have MT16VDDT6464AG-335C4.

Thanks for you help though, I'll try tinkering with the BIOS settings some more.

-Sokie