WTF.. Really bad mem controller or mobo?

[Repoman]

First of all the specs are in my sig.. 165 300x9, ballistix with 180 divider for 270MHz, Ultra-D. Right, on to the problem..

I've now had 2CPU's (148 and 165) on this board that wouldn't play games with pretty much any memory speed. I've had 3 different sets of RAM (ballistix, RMAd that and bought GSkill HZ, got refund for that and using the RMAd ballistix now). I was sure I just had horrible luck with memory, but I'm finding that hard to believe after 3 sets, 2 different procs and the only thing I've used in common is the Ultra-d.

Here are the things I've tried
-every combination of Drive strength and data drive strength from 5/1-8/3 (any lower and I got BSOD etc). 8/2 turned out to be best
-Every TREF value, all 32 of them.. many didn't boot, most froze at the Far Cry loading screen, but 3684 (100MHz 1.95us) turned out to be the best, which is what I had set all along during my drive strength testing.
-MAL/RP I have at 10/8, 9/7 was no different in case you think they were too high.
-2T timing actually made it less stable..
-Every voltage step from 2.5-2.75, 2.6v was by far the best, and pretty much the only one that would make it past Far Cry loading screen
-Tried one stick at a time, one of them worked better, almost made it to the next level while the other crashed at the loading screen but in the end they both failed..
-Tried yellow slots, little worse than the orange ones, 2T didn't help either.
-5/10-2FIX, 6/23-3, 6/23-2BTA, 7/04-2BTA, FX60TEST BIOSes- 7042BTA seemed best but didn't really make any difference

The rig is superpi, prime, memtest, memtest for windows, occt, whatever stable. I also ran 8hrs of 3d05 on loop so no it's not the video card. PSU is stable also. The CPU runs at 50C+/- absolute max on load. I have a fan over the RAM also, 56CFM

This isn't only at 270MHz either, I've never gotten it to work with a 166 divider for 245MHz, or a 133 divider for 192MHz. I also tried 250x9 1:1 with the same results. 200x9 1:1 doesn't work either, though it is rather stable compared everything else.

I'm confident I've tried everything possible to get it to work.. let me know if I've overlooked anything, otherwise I have no choice but to RMA the motherboard and hope for the best. The fact that 2T actually makes it worse leads me to believe that the mem controller is fine. Here are my A64 tweaker settings and a pic of CPU-Z

http://images6.theimagehosting.com/untitled.9a7.th.JPG (http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=untitled.9a7.JPG)

[CRUSH-ER]

Try enabling 2T and or disabling Dram Bank Interleave if you haven't.

[Repoman]

2T makes it less stable and Bank interleave has been disabled from the start, or as soon as I began having problems. Enabling it didn't do anything to stability though, so it's been on since this morning

Tonight I think I'm gonna tear everything out of the case and get the board packed up, unless there's any other suggestions.. I'm certain I've done everything possible.

[DAK1640]

Switch mobo's

[CRUSH-ER]

Try lowering your Read Preamble to something like 6.

[Repoman]

Eh.. I tried 8/6 MAL/RP for a little, don't know what kind of difference it made but it was still unstable.

Just tried 200x9 1:1 again, wouldn't even boot until I set the divider to 180 and drive strength to auto.. crashed in CS:S after I got killed a few times :rolleyes: At that point I proceeded to tear the system apart and pack up the mobo. It's ready to go back to the egg tomorrow

[Plywood99]

I would have upped ldt to 1.3/1.4 and see what happened...

[Repoman]

I did try 1.3/1.6 LDT/Chipset and it was no different than stock, in fact it crashed quicker. Probably not because I upped the voltage, but unstable is unstable and can crash at any time, so yeah it made no difference.

[Delirious]

No sure if i missed it but did u try loosening the timeings, im sure u have.

Tried changeing the idle cycle limit from 256 to something tighter like 32?

Its very wierd that it passes all the stress test but crashes when u run a game.

I know u said your card passes 8 hrs of 3dmark but have u tried another card?

Last thing u havent tried is replacing the HDD, im 99% sure thats not the problem but it seems like that was the only thing u havent tried.

IF you have tried everything i would send the mobo a packin.

[Repoman]

Timings were loose to begin with, no I didn't try 3-4-4-8 but I did have it at 3-3-3-8 180MHz and still crashed.

I don't have another card to try, besides an 8MB RageXL PCI that won't play any of my games that crash :P

First thing though, is to replace the MB.. it's already packed and getting next dayed to newegg tomorrow. I will try my 80GB IDE HDD though if it still doesn't work. I'm fairly confident that was the problem though, 2 CPUs and 3 sets of RAM later

Plus Far Cry actually brings up the critical exception screen most of the time, where it tells you the bad address and "call stack something or other" with a bunch of RAM addresses, saying that it couldn't write/read to the memory

[demonbane23]

Timings were loose to begin with, no I didn't try 3-4-4-8 but I did have it at 3-3-3-8 180MHz and still crashed.

I don't have another card to try, besides an 8MB RageXL PCI that won't play any of my games that crash :P

First thing though, is to replace the MB.. it's already packed and getting next dayed to newegg tomorrow. I will try my 80GB IDE HDD though if it still doesn't work. I'm fairly confident that was the problem though, 2 CPUs and 3 sets of RAM later

Plus Far Cry actually brings up the critical exception screen most of the time, where it tells you the bad address and "call stack something or other" with a bunch of RAM addresses, saying that it couldn't write/read to the memory

for your sake hopefully its just the mobo butI had a similar problem where I was 25+ hour prime stable but couldnt play games,,,

I just uped my LDT to 1.5 and then raised my chipset to 1.8,,, then I proceeded to do what helped the most which was to install the windows AMD opteron drivers to run stable in windows,,, and wow did things change,, all my stability and crashing problems disapeared,,,

[politenessman]

yea the amd cpu drivers got me stable and brought my temps down. since your cpu and ram seem stable in all other cases, superpi, prime, etc, have you swapped out your video card yet? n/m, i just read that you have no other card. can you run 3dmark01 or 05? since from what you report your machine seems stable, i would rty to have vid card checked out. if you cant swap it out, bring it to a local and ask if they will swap it in.

very truly yours,
politenessman

[STickGuy]

Also what is the stepping on your current Opty

[Repoman]

CCBWE 0534 SPMW, I love it :)

BTW politenessman, my first thought was video card too, but it's been tested 3 times overnight 99 loops of all GPU 3dmark05 tests, 8x3 hours worth of full load @1600x1200

I'm confident that it's mobo or at least memory/cpu related, since changing DRAM configs help quite a bit. At one point I had it completely stable with the old set of 2GB GSkill HZ, TREF of 0016 cycles was the setting. Unfortunately that brought my system to a crawl, but I played quite a bit of Far Cry there and it was fine until that became unstable too, even in memtest

[demonbane23]

CCBWE 0534 SPMW, I love it :)

BTW politenessman, my first thought was video card too, but it's been tested 3 times overnight 99 loops of all GPU 3dmark05 tests, 8x3 hours worth of full load @1600x1200

I'm confident that it's mobo or at least memory/cpu related, since changing DRAM configs help quite a bit. At one point I had it completely stable with the old set of 2GB GSkill HZ, TREF of 0016 cycles was the setting. Unfortunately that brought my system to a crawl, but I played quite a bit of Far Cry there and it was fine until that became unstable too, even in memtest


you have the AMD opteron drivers installed for windows?

[zzurf]

First of all the specs are in my sig.. 165 300x9, ballistix with 180 divider for 270MHz, Ultra-D. Right, on to the problem..

I've now had 2CPU's (148 and 165) on this board that wouldn't play games with pretty much any memory speed. I've had 3 different sets of RAM (ballistix, RMAd that and bought GSkill HZ, got refund for that and using the RMAd ballistix now). I was sure I just had horrible luck with memory, but I'm finding that hard to believe after 3 sets, 2 different procs and the only thing I've used in common is the Ultra-d.

Here are the things I've tried
-every combination of Drive strength and data drive strength from 5/1-8/3 (any lower and I got BSOD etc). 8/2 turned out to be best
-Every TREF value, all 32 of them.. many didn't boot, most froze at the Far Cry loading screen, but 3684 (100MHz 1.95us) turned out to be the best, which is what I had set all along during my drive strength testing.
-MAL/RP I have at 10/8, 9/7 was no different in case you think they were too high.
-2T timing actually made it less stable..
-Every voltage step from 2.5-2.75, 2.6v was by far the best, and pretty much the only one that would make it past Far Cry loading screen
-Tried one stick at a time, one of them worked better, almost made it to the next level while the other crashed at the loading screen but in the end they both failed..
-Tried yellow slots, little worse than the orange ones, 2T didn't help either.
-5/10-2FIX, 6/23-3, 6/23-2BTA, 7/04-2BTA, FX60TEST BIOSes- 7042BTA seemed best but didn't really make any difference

The rig is superpi, prime, memtest, memtest for windows, occt, whatever stable. I also ran 8hrs of 3d05 on loop so no it's not the video card. PSU is stable also. The CPU runs at 50C+/- absolute max on load. I have a fan over the RAM also, 56CFM

This isn't only at 270MHz either, I've never gotten it to work with a 166 divider for 245MHz, or a 133 divider for 192MHz. I also tried 250x9 1:1 with the same results. 200x9 1:1 doesn't work either, though it is rather stable compared everything else.

I'm confident I've tried everything possible to get it to work.. let me know if I've overlooked anything, otherwise I have no choice but to RMA the motherboard and hope for the best. The fact that 2T actually makes it worse leads me to believe that the mem controller is fine. Here are my A64 tweaker settings and a pic of CPU-Z

http://images6.theimagehosting.com/untitled.9a7.th.JPG (http://server6.theimagehosting.com/image.php?img=untitled.9a7.JPG)




Have you tried this?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429

I could not even start my favourite Secret weapons of wwII Demo withouth it.