DDR400: bios settings and windows 2000

[Mycroft Holmes]

Hi to everyone,

We have a workstation running windows 2000 sp4; hardware is AMD Athlon
3000, 2x512MB ram DDR400 and Asus motherboard A7N8X deluxe.

Memory frequency in BIOS may be set to "AUTO" or "BY SPD".

If we use "AUTO" the pc runs very fine and smooth, but RAM runs at slower
speed (2x166, timings 7-3-3, latency 2.5T)

If we switch to "BY SPD", ram changes to 2x200, 8-4-4, 3T, but the pc
becomes indeed unstable, and everytime the graphic card kicks in (for
example: running graphic benckmarks) the system goes in a blue screen
(uncaught ntoskernel exceptions)

Two questions:
1) may that be an AGP settings problem?
2) may the problem be RAM's manifacturer?

any other idea/solution is welcome,

MH

 

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

What brand and model of RAM are you using?
Not all are alike, and cheaper ones tend to sometimes cause problems
(especially in DDR400).

And, just wondering : why the heck do u use that kind of hardware in a W2K
workstation? I'd like to have that kind of workstation too ^_^ But, imho,
W2K was never intended for mainly multimedia purposes - why don't you run
XP?

Glenn.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Hi,

my ram is Apacer DDR-DIMM 512MB, PC-3200, Infineon,184Pin,400MHz
Yes, it's cheap, but not that cheap

In the meanwhile, I found on google that it's not a good idea to keep ram
out of sync with the athlon (which still runs at 333, not at 400), since the
NForce2 chipset is highly optimized for sync-mode.

My pc runs _very_ fine with windows 2000, I'm pretty satisfied of it and it
does all multimedia work. And... well, this is a W2K newsgroup, so I can
freely say I don't like XP (but I'm waiting for longhorn).
I think most of the performance of a pc relies on hardware drivers, and IMHO
driver developers have more experience on 2K than on XP.

 

[Glenn - Audio&Media Europe nv]

Ah yes, didn't cross my mind... Had this kind of prob once too.
And I did use w2k for a very long time on my multimedia machine, but went to
XP to be able to play some older games (hehe, fast multimedia machine to
play older games...).
XP is quite ok when you turn off all the teletubbie-themes and such, still I
don't like Win modifying all the settings - kinda feels like I "lost
control" over the system. Ah well...

 

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

Hi,

my ram is Apacer DDR-DIMM 512MB, PC-3200, Infineon,184Pin,400MHz
Yes, it's cheap, but not that cheap

In the meanwhile, I found on google that it's not a good idea to keep ram
out of sync with the athlon (which still runs at 333, not at 400), since the
NForce2 chipset is highly optimized for sync-mode.

Could also be a mobo issue - the same chip can be clocked at different speed
on different mobos. Etc. And keep in mind that a resource hog like W2K can
mess up all kinds of timings, 'cuz it insists on providing "services" even
though you haven't asked for them. Try trimming it - there are a number of
services you probably don't need, chief among them Indexing.

Yeah, I like W2K better than XP, too, so far anyway (my son has an XP Pro
running on a 1.8MHz P4). It's a leaner OS, wh/ makes for faster system speed.
But I like my Other OS even better. It runs _everything_ faster on this
AMD Duron 800MHz box than W2K does. It just won't run Train Sim, wh is the
only reason I got Windows.

HTH&HF

 

[Bobby Davies]

One other solution would be to see if you motherboard lets you unlock the
chip by upping the fsb to 200 and dropping the multiplier down.

Just a thought.

 

[nut cracker]

It could be the combinatiuon of the ram slots you have the chips in...
It could be that you are mixing memory brands...

I have a single 512 Kingstony Hyper-X DDR400 chip in my gigabyte G7-VAX-A. I
used to run an XP2100+ in there at 133 FSB... had no problems running the
system with "top performance" enabled, and the memory clock at 400. I even
overclocked and had the memory runing at 460Mhz... it was solid. Now im
running an XP2600 (333, 512K) and it rips. I will probably never use another
Intel processor (except for SMP, but I might play with the AMD stuff on that
too) again...

Also, check:

alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus

They will be way more help.

NuTs

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

thanks for your ideas.

1) I have 2 identical ram banks in slot 2 & 3
2) the ram manifacturer is officially "unsupported" by asus, so that's the
primary issue
3) moreover, I'm not going to overclock anything, so I'll keep "optimal
mode" on in the bios

 

[nedrah]

Just finished building my last of 52 computers for a finance
corporation. Specs and hardware requested by the company were from a
computer retailer. ( I guess they used their qoute to to shop me
)These are for 27 workstations and 25 servers built identical. lol.
There software company only recommends windows 2000 to run with their
finance software.

shuttle av49vn
p4 2.66 533fsb
1 gb ddr memory

They made no specification on pc2100,2700 or 3200.

Out of all the memory I purchased , I bought 20 sticks of Apacer 512mb
3200 ddr 3cas memory. The system is unstable with 2-512 sticks
installed. The only way I can run 1gb of apacer memory is to run the
apacer chip with a kreton or crucial memory chip that is 2.5 cas and
set the bios to 3.0 cas and clock speed to 133,then it is stable. All
the other system worked fine with a gig of kreton 512, Crucial 512, or
Kingston without any adjustments.I would like to know if anyone has had
any other experiences with apacer 512 ddr memory bios settings


nedrah