why cant i get this system to spec?

[wasp9166]

amd athlon xp 3200+ barton, asus a7n8x-e deluxe, kingston ddr400 khx3200ak2........................i have both 512 ram chips in the dual channel mode on mb, i have them set in bios at the advertised timing 2-3-2-6........cpu multiplier is locked at 11...........i cant get the fsb to run past 196 mhz without stability problems , games ctd , puter freezing up or restarting etc...........196 seems fine..............wanted to get your opinions on why you think this may be happening, i thought id at least get the 200mhz i should and then i could tweak the fsb up a little from there , but i cant even get the baseline.................ram is running 2.6v , cpu is 1.69...........i called kingston and of course they said they no longer support ddr 400 use in this board because of instability...............she said the highest they support is ddr 333.............wondering if theres some sort of a work around i could try or if im basically stuck with what i got , thanx oh , and the highest ive seen the temp is 48c using asus probe

 

[The Coolest]

Ok, there are several things that could be wrong:
First of all use a memory divider and set memory lower than FSB. then try to reach a higher FSB, and see if it works, if it doesn't then its not memory that's the problem
Next up is the motherboard, is this the 1st or 2nd revision of this board? Many first revisions of NF2 didn't like anything over 190MHz, and most wouldn't hit 200MHz even.
if its Ver 2, then next up is the PSU. What PSU Brand/Model/Rating are you using and what other stuff is connected to it? What video card are you running?

 

[wasp9166]

Ok, there are several things that could be wrong:
First of all use a memory divider and set memory lower than FSB. then try to reach a higher FSB, and see if it works, if it doesn't then its not memory that's the problem
Next up is the motherboard, is this the 1st or 2nd revision of this board? Many first revisions of NF2 didn't like anything over 190MHz, and most wouldn't hit 200MHz even.
if its Ver 2, then next up is the PSU. What PSU Brand/Model/Rating are you using and what other stuff is connected to it? What video card are you running?

this is my fist build , im actually learning all this as i figure it out, i dont know what a memory divider is but i did run memtest and got no errors

asus probe says rev 2.xx for board

im using an antec smartpower 400w, which ive been told are flaky from the start, i do have an enermax 485 w on the way

im running an evga 6600gt card , with power plug.....other than that, a 40g wd drive , dvd-rom, cd-rw.........floppy, keyboard , ya know

 

[The Coolest]

Although its not THAT power hungry, but it is possible that its PSU's fault, AFAIK ASUS liked to make their K7 boards use the 5v rail to power CPU which are not always powerfull enough.
The enermax should be a lot better

 

[wasp9166]

also the enermax is dual rail where i dont think the smartpower is......so you suggest at this point , put the new psu in , bump it to 200 mhz and see what happens? i did read somewhere about a fsb to ram ratio or something but i couldnt find anything like that in the bios..........ill throw it in , report back

 

[wasp9166]

ok psu is in, again , 196 everything is fine, i set it to 200, boots into windows but immediately gives me bsod stop error...............i did notice , since i had to load the defaults in bios after i changed the psu to get it to boot, the multiple is not locked at 11 i was wrong ,but thats what its set on now 11 ,also there is a setting for memory frequency, it has options - by spd, then starts 50% and goes up to 200%.................one thing i find odd as well , in the bios the memory voltage says 2.6 but when i run nvidia system utility, it says the memory is receiving 2.7 v and it is at the overclock threshold line in the voltage graph.....dont know how reliable this program is but someone is lying ,lol

 

[GrimReality]

I'm using the same ram, try 2.5-3-3-11

 

[wasp9166]

well i guess thats what im not understanding, if i leave the default settings, where its set to optimal not user defined, the ram timings become greyed out and the bios sets it to 2.5-3-3-8..................even with it this way and at 200 mhz i was having this bsod problem,it all started when i went from an xp 2400+ which has a 133 mhz to this xp 3200+ with 200 ( well it should be), i had no problems running the 2400+ in the auto settings...............when i put the 3200+ in i was bsod every 5 minutes , so i called kingston , they had me change the cpu to 166 mhz and i saw how the ram timings changed, thats when it dawned on me how this works, so i went in and manually set the timings at 2-3-2-6 , which according to kingston is what it should be........this is hyperx ram , supposedly designed for overclocking, anyways at 2.5-3-3-8 i had the same problem.............196 and 2-3-2-6 is stable , i just want to figure out whats going on here........btw the memory frequency is on auto, maybe thats another problem.......... i called amd they suggested the psu, i called kingston they said they dont support ddr400 in this board , basically telling me to return it and put in ddr333, i called asus, they showed me how to get into the bios but really didnt have much to say other than ........"try it"

 

[Captain Newbie]

Could you please tell us _which_ STOP error is occuring?

On the STOP screen there will be a big long string of UPPERCASE_WORDS_WITH_UNDERSCORES_LIKE_THIS, for instance IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

** Power is always, always now and forevermore suspect with me. I lost a 64 3200 to a dodgy PSU (don't ask) and the system had been throwing up BSOD's pretty reuglarly the day before it let out the magic smoke. It could be that the margnial increase in power requirements has caused the PSU to roll over and quit when you get to 11 by 200.

Try another PSU before you smell something burning

Good luck and to the forums!

 

[The Coolest]

Lower the "memory speed value" to 50% for testing. And try 200MHz again, if it doesn't work, its probably the motherboard or CPU(?) try running Prime95 set to Small FFTs (Options --> Torture Test)

 

[wasp9166]

Could you please tell us _which_ STOP error is occuring?

On the STOP screen there will be a big long string of UPPERCASE_WORDS_WITH_UNDERSCORES_LIKE_THIS, for instance IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL.

** Power is always, always now and forevermore suspect with me. I lost a 64 3200 to a dodgy PSU (don't ask) and the system had been throwing up BSOD's pretty reuglarly the day before it let out the magic smoke. It could be that the margnial increase in power requirements has caused the PSU to roll over and quit when you get to 11 by 200.

Try another PSU before you smell something burning

Good luck and to the forums!

it is a new psu, and yes thats one of the errors, another is page fault in nonpaged area


another is problem caused by this file win32k.sys

 

[wasp9166]

ran prime95,well it ran 7 minutes

FATAL ERROR:rounding was 0.4998683929,expected less than 0.4

hardware failure detected.................... so change memory frequency to 50% and see if 200 mhz will run?

 

[The Coolest]

if you ran it at small FFTs its more likely that the processor is unstable than the RAM, but sure give it a shot see what happens. If it happens again it means that the CPU is unstable.
Also when prime95 runs, what do your +5v and +12v rails read?

 

[wasp9166]

well that was refreshing, i changed memory frequency to 50% it said resulting frequency 100mhz under that when i put cpu back to 200 mhz, wouldnt even boot into bios, had to call asus and learn how to clear the cmos , whew................basically the guy at asus said if kingston is telling you that ram wont run at 400mhz on that board then your probably not going to get it to run ....................he suggested i get some corsair, and return the kingston to newegg

 

[wasp9166]

if you ran it at small FFTs its more likely that the processor is unstable than the RAM, but sure give it a shot see what happens. If it happens again it means that the CPU is unstable.
Also when prime95 runs, what do your +5v and +12v rails read?

yes small fft , torture,..................when i run it my +12vgoes from 12.544 to 12.608 and stays there

my +5v goes from 5.026 to 4.972 and then fluctuates the remaining time between 4.972 and 4.945


well, i got the cpu from buyaib, never bought from them b4 , but found em on pricewatch and the price was right, it came sandwiched inbetween 2 pieces of plastic with 2 rubber bands around it, no factory packaging or anything, i had my suspicions from the get go, however...............seeing that kingston says their ddr400 is not stable on this board im going to return it and get some mushkin, unless you see something from these tests that prove its the cpu.................then , with the ram and psu down, if it happens again ill have the cpu returned................

 

[The Coolest]

If memtest was stable but Prime95 wasn't its most likely something to do with the CPU.
Did you try lowering memspeed and Priming again?

 

[wasp9166]

well i lowered the mem frequency to 50% and that put the resulting frequency at 100 mhz, 50% of the cpu 200mhz i presume................it wouldnt even boot into bios, how low should i go on the mem frequency to try prime again? when you say mem speed are you talking about its frequency or its timings? i guess thats what i dont understand

 

[The Coolest]

try 166MHz for the mem

 

[wasp9166]

well, i put cpu at 200mhz, mem frequency at 83% - 166mhz..............ran prime, it took about 3 seconds for it to find error, fatal error:.4999399185, expected less than .4......................also , very unstable , ...............the way ive been checking if the system is stable after i make a change is by running spybot and adaware at the same time, if they both complete i know its good........after the changes and running prime i tried spybot, froze comp up instant, rebooted into windows , bsod instant................now im back to 196 mhz, mem frequency auto..............

 

[GrimReality]

Try upping your vcore a bit, say to 1.75v