memtest86 reporting memory error

D

DevilsPGD

I just purchased a new motherboard, CPU, and video card, built the
system, ran memtest86 and I'm getting memory errors.

I purchased:
Athlon X64 3000+ CPU
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI
Radeon X550
P180 Case

From my old system I scavenged:
Antec NeoPower 480W power supply
2xWD Raptor 36.7GB
1xSeagate 400GB
4xKingston 512MB PC3200 400MHz
1xSound Blaster Audigy 2 Live
2xDVD drives

I let memtest86 run for over a dozen passes on the old system within the
last month or so after I shuffled some RAM around, so I tend to suspect
that the RAM is good, but I'm not really sure where to start
troubleshooting the new system.

I'm thinking my first step should be to try removing all but one stick,
and if that doesn't show any problems, try that one stick in each slot
and see if I can narrow it down to a slot. If not, try each piece of
RAM in the first slot and see if I can identify a piece of RAM.

Am I missing anything obvious or is that the way to go?
 
S

spodosaurus

DevilsPGD said:
I just purchased a new motherboard, CPU, and video card, built the
system, ran memtest86 and I'm getting memory errors.

I purchased:
Athlon X64 3000+ CPU
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI
Radeon X550
P180 Case

From my old system I scavenged:
Antec NeoPower 480W power supply
2xWD Raptor 36.7GB
1xSeagate 400GB
4xKingston 512MB PC3200 400MHz
1xSound Blaster Audigy 2 Live
2xDVD drives

I let memtest86 run for over a dozen passes on the old system within the
last month or so after I shuffled some RAM around, so I tend to suspect
that the RAM is good, but I'm not really sure where to start
troubleshooting the new system.

I'm thinking my first step should be to try removing all but one stick,
and if that doesn't show any problems, try that one stick in each slot
and see if I can narrow it down to a slot. If not, try each piece of
RAM in the first slot and see if I can identify a piece of RAM.

Am I missing anything obvious or is that the way to go?
Click to expand...

Could be the new motherboard doesn't play nicely with your particular
RAM modules or the board could just be defective. That's happened to me
once in the last year where any known good RAM I put in a new board
tested bad. Swapped the board and all was well.

Ari


--
spammage trappage: remove the underscores to reply

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]> spodosaurus
Could be the new motherboard doesn't play nicely with your particular
RAM modules or the board could just be defective. That's happened to me
once in the last year where any known good RAM I put in a new board
tested bad. Swapped the board and all was well.
Click to expand...

Swapping the board will be tough, I picked up the last one in stock, and
I'm rather impatient when it comes to new toys :)

Did you swap with the same model? In other words, was it a bad board,
or should I be expecting to change to a different brand or something?

I was originally eyeballing a Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI, it's almost
identical to the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI that I got, but the GA-K8NXP-SLI
has DPS and a wireless LAN card for the same price. I haven't been able
to find much information about whether or not I should care about DPS,
and although I'm not using the wireless LAN card right now, it's a nice
freebie.
 
S

spodosaurus

DevilsPGD said:
In message <[email protected]> spodosaurus



Swapping the board will be tough, I picked up the last one in stock, and
I'm rather impatient when it comes to new toys :)

Did you swap with the same model? In other words, was it a bad board,
or should I be expecting to change to a different brand or something?
Click to expand...

If that model of board doesn't like your RAM, then yes, be expecting to
change brands. Also, if you got the last one in stock, you don't have
much choice, do you? You've set all the BIOS settings for the DRAM to
the most conservative ones prior to testing, right?
I was originally eyeballing a Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI, it's almost
identical to the Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI that I got, but the GA-K8NXP-SLI
has DPS and a wireless LAN card for the same price. I haven't been able
to find much information about whether or not I should care about DPS,
and although I'm not using the wireless LAN card right now, it's a nice
freebie.
Click to expand...


--
spammage trappage: remove the underscores to reply

I'm going to die rather sooner than I'd like. I tried to protect my
neighbours from crime, and became the victim of it. Complications in
hospital following this resulted in a serious illness. I now need a bone
marrow transplant. Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow
transplant, too. Please volunteer to be a marrow donor:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
L

larry moe 'n curly

DevilsPGD said:
I just purchased a new motherboard, CPU, and video card, built the
system, ran memtest86 and I'm getting memory errors.

I purchased:
Athlon X64 3000+ CPU
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI
Radeon X550
P180 Case

From my old system I scavenged:
Antec NeoPower 480W power supply
2xWD Raptor 36.7GB
1xSeagate 400GB
4xKingston 512MB PC3200 400MHz
1xSound Blaster Audigy 2 Live
2xDVD drives

I let memtest86 run for over a dozen passes on the old system within the
last month or so after I shuffled some RAM around, so I tend to suspect
that the RAM is good,
Click to expand...
I'm thinking my first step should be to try removing all but one stick,
and if that doesn't show any problems, try that one stick in each slot
and see if I can narrow it down to a slot.
Click to expand...

What brand of chips are on those Kingston modules? All of my DDR
Kingston ValueRAM modules have no-name chips on them, and I've found
lots of ValueRam to be defective or incompatible with certain mobos,
and few can be overclocked reliably at all. Also it's taken as long as
4-5 hours for MemTest86 to find some errors, and I test with Gold
Memory as well because it's usually a lot faster at detecting errors.
But use both diagnostics because my last Kingston, a 512M PC3200,
passed Gold for hours but consistently failed MemTest86 in a few
minutes.
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]>
larry moe 'n curly said:
What brand of chips are on those Kingston modules? All of my DDR
Kingston ValueRAM modules have no-name chips on them, and I've found
lots of ValueRam to be defective or incompatible with certain mobos,
and few can be overclocked reliably at all. Also it's taken as long as
4-5 hours for MemTest86 to find some errors, and I test with Gold
Memory as well because it's usually a lot faster at detecting errors.
But use both diagnostics because my last Kingston, a 512M PC3200,
passed Gold for hours but consistently failed MemTest86 in a few
minutes.
Click to expand...

I'm using the HyperX modules, which have heatsinks and I can't really
view the chips easily.

However, it's worth noting that they've been up for many months in my
old P4 system and have had memtest86 run many times without problems.
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]> spodosaurus
If that model of board doesn't like your RAM, then yes, be expecting to
change brands. Also, if you got the last one in stock, you don't have
much choice, do you? You've set all the BIOS settings for the DRAM to
the most conservative ones prior to testing, right?
Click to expand...

My second choice was almost identical, but doesn't have DPS or 802.11b/g
(which is just a PCI card, but it's still a nice freebie), but it's
exactly the same brand, chipset, physical layout, everything, so it
might not be any better.

I haven't changed the RAM settings at all, everything is left at the
BIOS defaults, except that I disabled some of the onboard peripherals
that I don't use.

I might play around with the RAM settings and see if that makes a
difference. I don't overclock, so I'm not really well versed (although
I've read enough that I know most of the terms and have a general idea
of what they mean, I just don't have much personal experience)
 
J

JAD

Why did you run that POS software in the first place? Were you having
problems with the machine and that's what prompted you to attempt
troubleshooting?
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]> "JAD"
Why did you run that POS software in the first place?
Click to expand...

Point of sale software? Okay, bad joke..

But seriously, why not? -- I don't know about you, but I consider it a
problem if my RAM is returning different bytes then my system is
storing. If nothing else, it makes debugging software a bitch.
Were you having
problems with the machine and that's what prompted you to attempt
troubleshooting?
Click to expand...

It's one of the things I usually do after building a new machine, part
of an informal "stress test" of sorts. No specific problems that I can
attribute to RAM, although I have had a couple lockups (which have gone
away after a BIOS upgrade)
 
H

Homer J. Simpson

I would suggest using manual memory settings.

You haven't identified what CPU core you have. If you have a Venice core
CPU it uses an improved integrated memory controller on the CPU die that
will allow all 4 DIMMs to run at 400MHz, although you may have to reduce the
Command Rate to 2T to achieve stability.

Older AMD Athlon 64 CPU cores' (e.g. Newcastle, Winchester) memory
controllers required underclocking the RAM to 333MHz if all four RAM slots
were being used.
 
J

JAD

DevilsPGD said:
In message <[email protected]> "JAD"


Point of sale software? Okay, bad joke..

But seriously, why not? -- I don't know about you, but I consider it a
problem if my RAM is returning different bytes then my system is
storing. If nothing else, it makes debugging software a bitch.


It's one of the things I usually do after building a new machine, part
of an informal "stress test" of sorts. No specific problems that I can
attribute to RAM, although I have had a couple lockups (which have gone
away after a BIOS upgrade)
Click to expand...

I C. Interesting test case this will be. Please follow up with the out
come.
 
S

Shep©

I just purchased a new motherboard, CPU, and video card, built the
system, ran memtest86 and I'm getting memory errors.
Click to expand...

If this is a new system and you have bought good equipment why did you
run a software,"Memory" tester?

Have you built many systems?

Have you bought the correct type of devices for your system/mother
board?

Have you researched any known incompatibilities for the mother board?

Have you correctly set the BIOS parameters for the devices you are
using?

Have you correctly positioned your PCI devices for the motherboard.

The above is just a starter.

HTH :)
 
L

larry moe 'n curly

Why did you run that POS software in the first place?
Click to expand...

Why do you keep criticizing memory test programs without showing any
proof to justify your opinion? Even SIMMtester.com, a maker of memory
testing machiens, says that MemTest86 is very good.
 
T

TonyC

JAD said:
Why did you run that POS software in the first place? Were you having
problems with the machine and that's what prompted you to attempt
troubleshooting?
Click to expand...

What is your problem with MemTest? DFI seem to think it's good enough to
have in the BIOS of nForce4 boards.
 
N

Norm De Plume

TonyC said:
What is your problem with MemTest? DFI seem to think it's good enough to
have in the BIOS of nForce4 boards.
Click to expand...

What does JAD put in the BIOSes he/she/it writes?
 
D

DevilsPGD

In message <[email protected]> "JAD"
I C. Interesting test case this will be. Please follow up with the out
come.
Click to expand...

So, was I having problems with the machine? As it turns out, a number
of problems fixed themselves when I managed to tweak things enough that
memtest86+ stopped reporting errors.

Among them:

-The system would go to a black screen after shutting down rather then
rebooting when requested.
-The system would not come out of Standby.
-DLL errors whenever launching certain network-related applications
(dig, host, psservice, and a few others)
-Lockups when attempting to ipconfig/release (but /renew was fine if I
didn't /release first)
-Bluescreen when attempting to launch a recovery console from boot CD.
-Bluescreen when attempting to boot a known-good BartPE CD.

All of these issues disappeared once I fixed the memory issue. When I
reverted to my previous settings, the issues returned, so yes, they were
memory related, and yes, memtest86+ did point me in the right direction
since I was initially assuming a driver incompatibility.
 

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