Asus with Kingston RAM problem. [please help]

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Bathroom_Monkey

Hi,

I built the following system:

Asus A7V333
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
512 MB Kingston PC2700 DDR CL2.5 RAM

Things have been very stable since I built the system, but just
recently I decided to put in another identical stick of Kingston RAM
to get the machine to 1GB. Since then, the system has been very
unstable. I contacted Kingston and they sent me another stick of the
same model of RAM, but apparently made differently or something, and
this was supposed to fix the problem. Sure enough, I got the new
stick of RAM and the computer is unstable again. I updated the BIOS
to revision 1016, but this didn't solve the problem.

It's weird because it works fine with the single stick of Kingston
RAM, but when I try to upgrade it with a second, it gets really
unstable and all of my games crash. Has anyone else had any issues
with Kingston RAM, or does anyone know a solution to this problem?
 
Hi,

I built the following system:

Asus A7V333
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
512 MB Kingston PC2700 DDR CL2.5 RAM

Things have been very stable since I built the system, but just
recently I decided to put in another identical stick of Kingston RAM
to get the machine to 1GB. Since then, the system has been very
unstable. I contacted Kingston and they sent me another stick of the
same model of RAM, but apparently made differently or something, and
this was supposed to fix the problem. Sure enough, I got the new
stick of RAM and the computer is unstable again. I updated the BIOS
to revision 1016, but this didn't solve the problem.

It's weird because it works fine with the single stick of Kingston
RAM, but when I try to upgrade it with a second, it gets really
unstable and all of my games crash. Has anyone else had any issues
with Kingston RAM, or does anyone know a solution to this problem?
Click to expand...

There are a couple of things you can try.

In a single channel memory system with three slots, and no other
restrictions, slot 1 and slot 3 are the best locations for two
sticks of memory. This is based on spreading out the loading of
the DIMMs, which helps keep the equivalent impedance of the bus
a bit higher. (Some motherboards, like the P4PE, have restrictions
on what can be placed in slot 3, so on a P4PE, a sub-optimal choice
of slot1 and slot2 is all that is possible.)

A second thing you can play with is DIMM voltage. The Mushkin site
has some info on the JP1/JP2 jumpers on the A7V333, which I copied in
a previous post:

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

In theory, the first setting should be enough to make the ram
work. The second setting (also the factory default value) is
enough to make Mushkin 2-2-2 special edition work. Check the
jumpers to see if they have been moved. The last two settings
are too high for a memory that you want to last for a few years.

If the RAM still gives you trouble, try changing CAS to 3.
Also, check to make sure the memory bus speed hasn't been
set higher than the rating of the ram.

What Kingston was trying to do for you, was give you a DIMM with
a particular makers memory chips on it. Sometimes Kingston gathers
field return info, and based on that, they know that, say, the
KT333 chipset doesn't like certain kinds of chips. Kingston
ValueRam DIMMs might be made by three different suppliers, and
if Kingston knows what the motherboard is, they may further
narrow the choice and only ship one of the three types to you.

You could try searching in Google, using "KT333" as one search
term, and use the memory chip manufacturer's name as a second
term. That is a check to see if people have been having trouble
with those kind of chips.

The best way to test the memory, is with memtest86 from memtest.org.
The program you download, contains a floppy formatter, and
using a blank floppy, the program will make a standalone boot
disk for you. Set the startup boot order to include floppy, then
use the diskette. A couple of passes should give you a quick check
that all is well. Zero errors is the only acceptable result. The
test is much more sensitive than waiting for Windows to crash.

HTH,
Paul
 
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