Unstable system questions...

[nippyjun]

I have a A8N SLI premium. I'm trying to iron out some bugs that i belive are related to the memory i'm using (although i'm not sure). I'm using 2 sticks of Geil PC3500 512 megs and 2 sticks of Geil PC3500 256 megs for 1.5 megs total in dual channel mode. I'm not overclocking the memory and i'm letting the mobo autodetect the settings for it.

The problem is freezing in windows. The biggest problem is with internet explorer. If i open up a web page and scroll up and down really fast the system freezes up. If i remove the 2 256 meg sticks the problem seems to goes away. The timings are sligtly different on the 4 sticks but the default bios settings are looser than the sticks should be able to tolerate. I figured though that i'd up the CAS to 3 from 2.5. The system won't boot if i do that and the reporter keeps saying that there is a memory problem. I have to clear the CMOS to be able to boot. It seems strange that loosening the CAS would cause a memory problem doesn't it? It's 3 looser than 2.5?

I'm going to try to up the memory voltage to see if that helps.

Is there a way to let it boot even if it detects a memory problem. It's a hastle to clear the cmos.

I'm also getting some freezing in Doom3, but i'm not sure if that is memory related or not.

Keep in mind that i did a hard drive transplant on this system. I had the drive in my old Nforce3 system, i uninstalled all mobo and video drivers and uninstalled most of the devices in the device manager. Then i put it in my new nforce4 system and installed all the drivers. So could the freezing be related to not installing a fresh windows?

Is there a way to see what is causing the freezing problem in an event viewer somewhere?

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[VigilanteCS]

Doubt this is the problem, but to run in dual channel of the sticks have to be identical. You can't run in dual channel with 2x512 and 2x256.

 

[Navid]

You can run prime95 with only 2 sticks of memory. if it runs for few hours without stopping, your CPU is good for now (To be sure about the stability, you should at least run it overnight).

If your CPU is stable, you can run memtest with 4 sticks and with 4 sticks. If your CPU was stable and now you get any errors in memtest, you know that it is the memory.

Are both memory types supported by your motherboard?

 

[nippyjun]

Originally posted by: VigilanteCS
Doubt this is the problem, but to run in dual channel of the sticks have to be identical. You can't run in dual channel with 2x512 and 2x256.

I have one 512 and one 265 on each channel.

 

[nippyjun]

Originally posted by: Navid
You can run prime95 with only 2 sticks of memory. if it runs for few hours without stopping, your CPU is good for now (To be sure about the stability, you should at least run it overnight).

If your CPU is stable, you can run memtest with 4 sticks and with 4 sticks. If your CPU was stable and now you get any errors in memtest, you know that it is the memory.

Are both memory types supported by your motherboard?

I'll try prime95 and memtest and see if i can isolate the problem. Which memtest do you recommend?

 

[Navid]

I have only used this one.
http://www.memtest86.com/

I am actually curious as to what the other one is.