No CL3?

Well, i got my Kingston PC3200 ValueRam running at 224MHz or effective DDR448 (280fsb 5:4). Since once my fsb goes past 280, the system refuses to post and i guess it's my ram that's hit it's limit, but it's rock solid at 280fsb (30+ hours of Prime95). Anyway, i decided to relax the timings even more from 2.5-4-4-8 to 3-4-4-8 to get some more speed out of it and push somore more fsb, but even at 280fsb, the system refuses to post at CL3.
In both cases, with CL3 and CL2.5 at 281fsb, i experiance bios wierdness. The screen gets all weird and artifacts appear everywhere, letters are missing and weird coloured patches appear around the bios. The general dos messups. Eventually, i cant even move the selector around and the system stops responding. I had to clear CMOS to make the system boot again.

Is it really my ram crapping out on me, is it my mobo or is it my chip?

Also, why is my ram posting at CL2.5, but not CL3. By all theories i know, that should never be the case.

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies.

whats your NB cooling like is it still stock ?

Some memory chips just don't support CL3, and won't post at CL3 no matter what you do. This is true of BH5 and a lot of others...I would assume that's it true of your PC3200 also.

icic, and yes, my NB cooling is stock.

run your memory at 3/2 ratio. that will eliminate it as a possible factor, then try ocing the fsb if it runs faster than 283 then u most likely have reached your memory's maximum.if not then u have most likely have reached the cpu max..
also if u have bh5 chips, they will respond very favorably to higher voltages. so, u may want to consider a vdimm mod if your mb doesnt have voltage selections over 2.8