trouble shooting RAM

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I'm perplexed at the troubles I am having. I am getting all kinds of different signs pointing towards the big three players in my rig - mobo, ram, or cpu

Test bed:
UD3R
8g, all slots
Q9650

sorry to those who have been through this with me before ...

I was having no luck running my setup at 3.825Ghz 9x425 full setup Then I tried it with only 4g and still trouble. So I broke down my multi to a 6x500fsb to check the mobo and its subsystem. 9hrs of Large FFT's in P95 went well - no errors (full 8g & 500x6). I decided to double check the other part that deals with the mobo & NB = the RAM. Full 8g and ran Memtest86 v2.11 (still 500x6) fails off the bat. I am now testing each individual stick at the same 500x6 and it looks like 3 of the sticks are doing well. ***will edit later for the fourth stick*** This leads me to think either the CPU is failing or the mobo is tweaked. I say mobo also because I couldn't even run 400fsb x 9 with 8g. Any clues?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Found it, last stick. And thankfully it's from the new kit i bought.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Here is the lesson to take from this.

When testing your memory in Memtest86 vX.XX always run it at the limit of the fsb; e.g. DDR2 900 fsb450 x lowest multi, in my case DDR2 1000 500fsb x 6

I think I initially didn't run the 1:1 test and thought nothing of it. RMA is already filled out and ready to return for a refund.

 

[betaflame]

I'm sorry but I don't quite follow. The same effective RAM clock at different memory dividers causes a problem?

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

no, i didn't realize my first test wasn't at 500fsb 1:1 - this was a week ago. I initially was running the machine at stock, 333x9. up until then i didn't overclock it. I already knew the chip topped out at 4 1/4 Ghz. It turns out the ram would work at lower clocks. the only reason why i bought 1000 is to run high fsb - people argue the benefits of it but i was just pursuing a little adventure

 

[Erland]

I don't mean to spoil the party but why on earth do you need to overclock your computer with such good stats?

Is there something you do that needs more power or you just doing it for fun?

I assume from your statement about your adventure it's just for fun but, I figured I would ask.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

The machine is going to be a gaming & AVCHD editing machine which is a new format that people recommend an i7. In a thread in the Adobe forum, some genius who's thread someone how got 'stickied' says: video editing likes high fsb. So again, I went back to trying to stabilize high fsb. Turns out, 9x333 3Ghz chokes on AVCHD playback in Premiere Pro CS4 the same as 500x6. 400x9 will play it smooth in High Quality. So the guy is wrong. High fsb was something I was toying around with before and like I said, i just went after this for fun and the challenge I guess.