I just ran a quick test with my DFI nForce4 board, and am totally surprised by the results.
First off, I have noticed that when my memory is overclocked to the point where it starts to cause errors, it always causes errors at the same adresses.
Intrigued, I tried switching the two sticks between RAM slots. Stick one was in slot one, stick two was in slot three - I moved stick one to slot three, and stick two to slot one.
Strangely enough, the errors still occured at the same memory adresses.
But even more peculiar, I found that with the sticks set up one way in the same two slots, they produced more errors than they did when set up the other way in the same two slots.
With stick one in slot one, and stick two in slot three, I averaged ~5.2 errors per pass of memtest86 test #5. With stick one in slot three, and stick two in slot one, I got several hundred errors per pass. I immediately switched them back, and got my ~5 errors per pass again. I switched them back and forth twice to make absolutely sure - the difference in stability (as measured by the number of errors per pass) is signifigant and reproduceable 100% of the time.
What on earth is going on here? Why do my memory sticks appear to "prefer" one slot over the other, of the same pair of slots?
Could some of you please try exactly what I just outlined above, and see if your results line up with mine? You'll need an unstable memory overclock in order to count the errors, and "measure" stability.
This is too weird.
First off, I have noticed that when my memory is overclocked to the point where it starts to cause errors, it always causes errors at the same adresses.
Intrigued, I tried switching the two sticks between RAM slots. Stick one was in slot one, stick two was in slot three - I moved stick one to slot three, and stick two to slot one.
Strangely enough, the errors still occured at the same memory adresses.
But even more peculiar, I found that with the sticks set up one way in the same two slots, they produced more errors than they did when set up the other way in the same two slots.
With stick one in slot one, and stick two in slot three, I averaged ~5.2 errors per pass of memtest86 test #5. With stick one in slot three, and stick two in slot one, I got several hundred errors per pass. I immediately switched them back, and got my ~5 errors per pass again. I switched them back and forth twice to make absolutely sure - the difference in stability (as measured by the number of errors per pass) is signifigant and reproduceable 100% of the time.
What on earth is going on here? Why do my memory sticks appear to "prefer" one slot over the other, of the same pair of slots?
Could some of you please try exactly what I just outlined above, and see if your results line up with mine? You'll need an unstable memory overclock in order to count the errors, and "measure" stability.
This is too weird.