Stability problem with Chaintech 7NIF2 MB and Athlon XP 2000/266. Need advice!!

[Wuahn]

I'm building a couple of systems for my mother and my uncle. I wanted
a MicroATX motherboard with TV-out and found the Chaintech 7NIF2. I
ordered the fastest processor I could while staying within my budget,
so I got two Athlon XP 2000's.

The first sign that I had a serious problem was that the system would
not play MPEGs. Other types of video would play fine, but MPEGs would
immediately generate video corruption and either freeze the system or
spontaneously reboot. I thought it might be a bad video chip, but
both systems behaved exactly the same way.

Today I realized that I had purchased PC2700 and my processor only
requires PC2100. Is this causing my problem? My research leads me to
believe that the board should be perfectly happy with the memory
running asynchronously at 166 or underclocked at 133, but maybe the
onboard video isn't as forgiving.

The memory is made by "Geil". All of the sticks (I purchased four)
seem to behave the same. Is this memory just total crap or something?
I know it was cheap, but I was on a tight budget for this project.

Do I need to get better quality PC2100? Does anyone make a MicroATX
or FlexATX motherboard that uses DDR and has TV-out? Any help will be
appreciated.


-Wuahn

 

[LiveWire]

Today I realized that I had purchased PC2700 and my processor only

requires PC2100. Is this causing my problem? My research leads me to
believe that the board should be perfectly happy with the memory
running asynchronously at 166 or underclocked at 133, but maybe the
onboard video isn't as forgiving.

I'm not sure by your wording if you have actually tried underclocking the
PC2700 yet or not. My guess would be that you haven't.

I know on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe the memory frequency MUST be syncronized with
the FSB or I am bound to run into stability problems. The Asus group is
almost always flooded with memory questions that lead back to incorrect
memory/fsb frequency settings. I'm pretty sure this is related more to the
design of the nforce2 chipset than just the Asus implementation of it.

So my point is that if you haven't tried synchronizing the memory with the
FSB, then doing so should take care of your stability problem.

 

[Wuahn]

I'm not sure by your wording if you have actually tried underclocking the
PC2700 yet or not. My guess would be that you haven't.

I know on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe the memory frequency MUST be syncronized with
the FSB or I am bound to run into stability problems. The Asus group is
almost always flooded with memory questions that lead back to incorrect
memory/fsb frequency settings. I'm pretty sure this is related more to the
design of the nforce2 chipset than just the Asus implementation of it.

So my point is that if you haven't tried synchronizing the memory with the
FSB, then doing so should take care of your stability problem.

That was it exactly. I guess I got confused because the BIOS settings
don't match the manual. Some of the options were changed in later
BIOS revisions. On the 7NIF2 board, in my configuration, the "auto"
setting under memory timings was the killer. In this case, the "auto"
meant to set the timings by the SPD, but it could have just as easily
meant to set the timings to the CPU bus. The manual says the settings
are "by SPD" and "by Sync", but the options on my board are "auto" and
a range of percentages. Once I chose 100%, all of my problems
magically disappeared.

SDRAM Tras Timing Value: 6
SDRAM Trcd Timing Value: 3
SDRAM Trp Timing Value: 3
SDRAM CAS Latency Time: 2

The PC2700 is CAS-L 2.5 but seems happy at CAS-L 2.0 when running at
PC2100 speed, which seems to be the general rule with most boards.

I've run several burn-in loops with Sisoft SANDRA Pro without a hitch
and all of the MPEG videos I was having trouble with are playing ok.
The nVidia "Bugs" demo for the GeForce 4 MX is also working now. I've
been trying all night to crash the thing but it seems to be rock
stable.

Thanks for your help.


-Wuahn