NF7-S became unstable when switching to 2x512 Mb sticks?

[Caper]

Anything I missed about the NF7-S?
Been happily crusing 230-240 fsb for a long time, tried a new Bios and got corrupted Bios.
Used 2x256 Mb Corsair XMS3500 C2.
Mounted a Bios Savior and the board fired up again...but this time I could not get the board stable above 220 fsb with same RAM.

Anyway, switched to 2x512 Mb CorsairXMS C2 and with this RAM I have problems to run 166 fsb without sudden reboots, sometimes I cannot even boot.

Removing one stick and the problems gets away.
Both sticks runs above 220 fsb single but as soon I use both sticks the board gets horribly unstable even at 166 fsb.

Time to get rid of the board maybe?
Dying on me...or?

Any ideas?

[saaya]

i dont think it supports 1gb of memory... :(

you should try diferen biso versions though, ive seen people with 2x512mb sticks in an nf2 board...

[tylerhskate]

how could a recent board not support 1gb of memory? lol..thats weird

[STEvil]

hotflash to a bunch of different bios'es, they can affect ram support quite a bit.

nF2 supports 3gb ram, too, I believe.

[dalek]

NF7 supports 3BGs of memory. I have one with two 512MB sticks.

Can you test the sticks with memtest86 or something one stick at a time? Maybe one is bad.

Still strange though.

Later

:D :D :D

[Caper]

I´ll try memtest86 one stick at the time.
This is driving me crazy.

[Caper]

Memtest 200 fsb no problems using single sticks.
Using both makes the system horribly unstable.

Talk about lousy, maybe the mobo is dying on me.

[uwackme]

WTF.....

You need to use a CPC "off" bios to keep high FSB with 2X 512M doublesided sticks.

Search out TicTac's D23-3D-R2-CPC bios, this will give you good results. There are others as well, go to amdmb.com forum on ABit and there are TicTac and Trats threads with lots of mod'd bios's.

With the bios savior you are gold, download Flashmenu from Abit, and use it....Ive flashed 100's of times without incident.... disable the "clearcmos" option in Flashmenu. You flash, then reboot and hit DEL....immediately choose "load optimized defaults"....then go fill in all the settings you want in the bios and SAVE. Never an issue done this way.

I have the same issue, 2x 256M ch5 would do 240Mhz 11,2,2,2 no prob, but 2x 512M bh5 would not go past 185Mhz. One at a time they would do 220Mhz. Used the CPCoff bios and got to 220Mhz dual channel.

However on my DFI Infinity....240Mhz 2x 512M, sigh the NF7 let me down.

[Caper]

I tried that D23-3D-R2-CPC Bios earlier(used Flashmenu) but didn´t do me any good.
Anyway, I just flashed again and will try Dual sticks on next reboot.

Doubt it will do it much better this time but I hope so.
If not, this mobo is going out of the rig.

[Caper]

Wow...this board is weird :)

After flashing to D23-3D-R2-CPC I left it running 12 hours running Memtest86.
Using 225 fsb 2.0-2-2-11, stable as a rock Dual memory sticks.
Though I would try to see when I would have to have problems so I upped to 230, no problem.
235 and just ran 3-4 minutes Memtest, no problem.
240, same story.
245, same story.
250 gave me almost errors at once.

Now to the most interesting result.
When lowering again I could not get it stable at all.
Not 200, not 166, not 133 and not even 100 fsb :)
Errors at once.

Cleared cmos jumper and now running 225 fsb again.
*note* all using same timings 2.0-2-2-11.*end of note*

This board is behaving soooo strange with 2x512 Mb.

Well...I guess if it keep stable 225 I can live with it until I upgrade to A64.

[Lithan]

Be sure to play wc3. Ive yet to find a board that cant memtest up to 240.... of course most of these boards arent wc3 stable even to 200.

[Caper]

My main concern for the moment is not to get the board stable high fsb...it´s to get it stable atleast at 200 fsb.
Strange enough it seems that when I OC heavy and become unstable I must clear cmos jumper to even get it stable at 100 fsb.
Even at that speed the system reboots at splash screen or I get a BSOD or sudden reboot after windows loaded.

Clearing cmos jumper makes the board atleast 100% Prime stable at 225 fsb 2.0-2-2-11.

Very strange, didn´t have this behaviour earlier with 2x256 Mb.
Didn´t try any 3D application yet.

[Rabbi_NZ]

sorry dude but i dont think it's a RAM issue... in your first post you said that after replacing the BIOS chip with a saviour your overclock went down.
How exactly did you corrupt your last BIOS?
I have a bad feeling it's not a 2x512MB issue you have going on there :(

[Caper]

I´m not saying it´s the RAM.

The Bios got corrupted when playing with OC, went for 255 fsb and the bios got currupted.

[STEvil]

so flash to the same bios as you had to begin with and dont go for 255 again?

[Caper]

That Bios ain´t stable with 2x512 Mb.
Currently using D23-3D-R2-CPC and it´s stable 225 fsb.

The strange thing with all this is...if I OC to the point where I loose stability at high fsb the rig becomes completely unstable even if I back down to 100 fsb.
The trick is to clear cmos jumper.
Took me a while to figure that out, haven´t seen that before when using 2x256 Mb RAM.

All is good 225 fsb 2.0-2-2-11 now.
Maybe more but I´ll stay there for the time beeing.

[blinky]

nice clockin
i wanna see that 255fsb screeny