Greetings to all! It's been a while since I've posted here. With that said, I'll try to keep this brief and to the point.
I have 1 gig kit (2x512mb) of Crucial Ballistix ram that I believe is no good.
Here's why I think so:
*Note that all memory tests were done w/ 200 HTT @ 1:1 (although I tried the 166 and 133 memclk frequencies as well).
Sys Specs:
K8N Neo2 Platinum
AMD 64 3500
6800 gt
Antec Truepower 440
misc peripherals.
2x512mb Crucial Ballistix ddr400 w/ a 120 mm fan blowing on them.
1)When I run Memtest at SPD timings(2,2,2,8,2T) and voltages ranging from 2.5v to 2.85v, I immediately get swamped with errors. At 2.8v I tend to get less errors, but they're still very prevelant. Maybe 20 or so within the first minute. 2.85v was no different. Windows crashes at SPD timings, although I can run windows and most apps at looser timings and have therefore tried burning the ram in.
2) I've tried loosening the timings to no avail. Hell, I spent hours trying different configurations and I still get a plethora of memtest errors. I've literally tried almost all possible configurations of memory timings ranging from 2,2,2,5,1T to 3,4,4,11,2T at voltages ranging from 2.5v to 2.85v. No configuration passes mem test. In fact it takes less than 10 seconds to get an error virtually every time. I've also tried many other non memory related BIOS tweaks, A64 tweaker, and multiple beta BIOS's.
3) I thought possibly that it was due to another part of my system (PSU in particular, even though voltages were rock solid). I unplugged all non-essential peripherals and tried again. No change. I then took one of the ram sticks out to run in single channel mode. No change. I thought maybe I had a bad DIMM slot so I moved the stick to the other dimm slots with the same result. I then repeated this with the other stick of ram and the result was no different. Next I removed the ram from my system and installed a 1gig kit of corsair value ram from a friends computer. Memtest ran flawlessly at spd timings. I put the Ballistix into my friends comp and ran memtest again. You guessed it; it failed miserably.
My motherboard and CPU are rock solid, easily pushing 300 HTT with 3xHT, a 9x multi, and it's prime stable while running rthdribl... just not with the ballistix. The ballistix were bought in 04' so the 1 year crucial warranty has expired so I'm bummed. I searched for quite a while on these forums for information regarding this ram and saw a few other people mention that crucial manufactured a couple bad batches of ballistix so my guess is that I have a pair from one of those batches.
These are the timings I've found to be the most stable (notice the 1T 0_o):
If anyone has any ideas at all, I'm willing to try them.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
~e
I have 1 gig kit (2x512mb) of Crucial Ballistix ram that I believe is no good.
Here's why I think so:
*Note that all memory tests were done w/ 200 HTT @ 1:1 (although I tried the 166 and 133 memclk frequencies as well).
Sys Specs:
K8N Neo2 Platinum
AMD 64 3500
6800 gt
Antec Truepower 440
misc peripherals.
2x512mb Crucial Ballistix ddr400 w/ a 120 mm fan blowing on them.
1)When I run Memtest at SPD timings(2,2,2,8,2T) and voltages ranging from 2.5v to 2.85v, I immediately get swamped with errors. At 2.8v I tend to get less errors, but they're still very prevelant. Maybe 20 or so within the first minute. 2.85v was no different. Windows crashes at SPD timings, although I can run windows and most apps at looser timings and have therefore tried burning the ram in.
2) I've tried loosening the timings to no avail. Hell, I spent hours trying different configurations and I still get a plethora of memtest errors. I've literally tried almost all possible configurations of memory timings ranging from 2,2,2,5,1T to 3,4,4,11,2T at voltages ranging from 2.5v to 2.85v. No configuration passes mem test. In fact it takes less than 10 seconds to get an error virtually every time. I've also tried many other non memory related BIOS tweaks, A64 tweaker, and multiple beta BIOS's.
3) I thought possibly that it was due to another part of my system (PSU in particular, even though voltages were rock solid). I unplugged all non-essential peripherals and tried again. No change. I then took one of the ram sticks out to run in single channel mode. No change. I thought maybe I had a bad DIMM slot so I moved the stick to the other dimm slots with the same result. I then repeated this with the other stick of ram and the result was no different. Next I removed the ram from my system and installed a 1gig kit of corsair value ram from a friends computer. Memtest ran flawlessly at spd timings. I put the Ballistix into my friends comp and ran memtest again. You guessed it; it failed miserably.
My motherboard and CPU are rock solid, easily pushing 300 HTT with 3xHT, a 9x multi, and it's prime stable while running rthdribl... just not with the ballistix. The ballistix were bought in 04' so the 1 year crucial warranty has expired so I'm bummed. I searched for quite a while on these forums for information regarding this ram and saw a few other people mention that crucial manufactured a couple bad batches of ballistix so my guess is that I have a pair from one of those batches.
These are the timings I've found to be the most stable (notice the 1T 0_o):
If anyone has any ideas at all, I'm willing to try them.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
~e
Last edited:
