New stick of ram...STRANGE problem...Help!

Just bought a 512MB stick of Kingston ValueRam PC3200. I know it's not that great, but it was all I was willing to spend ($135 CDN).

I've been running a 512MB stick of KVR PC2700 for a year, and haven't had any problems with it. Gets unstable at 210MHz and beyond, but that's besides the point.

Anyways, I was doing some benchmarking with the old stick, so I can compare numbers to the new stick. Tried keeping the CPU at roughly the same frequency for all tests (166x11, 200x9) and test different memory timings. When I replaced the old stick with the new one, it booted fine at 166x11. I then tried 200x9, but it wouldn't even make it to POST. Reset the BIOS several times, but each time it wouldn't make it to POST. Tried 200x11 to see if that would work, and it works fine...

All memory timings on this new stick of RAM were done by SPD at stock voltage, so there's no funny business there. I haven't tried any other multipliers except 9 and 11 yet.

System: AQXEA 2500+, A7N8X-X, BBA 9800Pro R360, other bits and pieces

This processor has been stable at 2305MHz on air, so I highly doubt that's the problem. It also ran just fine with the 9x multiplier with the old stick of RAM. It also runs 200x11 @ 1.65V rock solid, and did so for almost a year before I pushed it more.

AFAIK, the RAM doesn't even see the CPU multiplier, so I'm unsure about how that would be affecting it. The old stick uses Samsung chips, and the new one uses Elpida chips. (mobo incompatability with Elpida chips maybe?)

Do any of you guys have any input, suggestions, advice, etc? I haven't run the new RAM through Memtest yet, so I'm not sure if it's truly borked or not.

You can always try manually setting the new stick to 3-4-4-8 to see if it does work @ ddr400, but definatly run memtest soon.

disk11 said:

You can always try manually setting the new stick to 3-4-4-8 to see if it does work @ ddr400, but definatly run memtest soon.

Click to expand...

K, I can try that.

It boots up fine at 200x10 and 166x12, so it just seems to have a problem with 9x.

200x11, 2.5-3-3-11 @ 2.6V with both sticks. Took ~28 mins for a pass of Memtest, but no errors or anything. I won't bother testing the max fsb that this stick will take, yet. I'm just happy that it's finally working!

I remember the NF7 has problems with the 9x and 10x multis which is fixed by the great BIOS modders community, but does this issue exist with other boards?

Hey, at least it works, good job.