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How many of you test your ram completely?

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Hayduke

Registered
Joined
Aug 27, 2001
Location
Zen State
I had a stick of Micron 256Meg pc2100 installed on my new Abit KR7A133 that came up as "good" on several memory tests UNTIL I ran Memtest86. It failed miserably on test#5 with almost 400,000 errors. I slowed the memory bus from 133 to 100 and still got 80 errors. In comparison, my old generic stick of pc133 on a Soyo BA+III checks out 100% good on all tests, even up to 138 Mhz fsb.

I expected the Micron ram to be good, especially with all the high ratings I see about it. I was wrong. From now on the FIRST test I do before even attempting to let the OS boot is to run my Memtest boot floppy. First, test number 5 then let it cycle through all the tests a few times. I think this will drastically reduce the number of mysterious problems and BSOD's.
 
It was a BRAND NEW stick? Or did you overclock it, then found out about the errors?
 
I ALWAYS test any new RAM with Memtest86, even if it's not OCed. It's a normal part of a new build or an update. I always run 24hrs of Prime95 and 24hrs of Memtest86, all eleven tests. You'd be suprised what you find sometimes.
 
Twist - Yes it was a new stick direct from Googlegear into my system, using a wrist-grounding strap for installation. It's being RMA'd now. If the next one is also defective I'll just tell them to upgrade it to the pre-tested PC3000 Corsair they sell.

I NEVER overclock anything new. I make sure everything is up and running at normal specs before I start tweaking anything.
 
I have used memtest86 on this - but never bothered with all the tests...just used it for 10 minutes to see what it was like - but I have a new stick of 512 coming through and I will be smacking that about the head to see what its like
 
From my own use, and reading the docs, I think test #5 or #8 is probably all you need, for an Athlon system anyway. If it passes those it should pass all the others. But I run them all just to be sure.

It's also makes a great safety feature for overclocking. By booting to the Memtest floppy and running through all the tests you can see if there's any point in continuing at whatever new speed you have selected. If you have a memory failure there's no point in booting to your os and risking data corruption. It won't help with other hardware problems but at least it eliminates ram as a root cause.
 
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