Kris said:
Cheers Paul,
I havent run that mem test s/w you mentioned BUT I have tried DocMem
which is supposed to be pretty godd and has indeed served me well.
I have taken all the cards out except the graphics which does apparent
work 100%. I say apparently since this isnt my PC. A friend went and
bought the bits last week and has just given up and asked me to get
windows on it.
The mem in I have checked agained ASUS recommened for this board and
it is there. So you would think its should pop in and run!!!
I my self have the P4 775 P5AD2 Premiumn ASUS board and work like a
dream so I trust ASUS :S with what they say.
I have gone right though BIOS setup and disabled ALL onboard h/w
except the main ATA controller and still get the same probs.
Kris
The difference is, memtest86 tests the entire memory. The
program actually moves itself out of the way, and tests even
the memory that originally held the code segment. No other memory
test program I've read about, does that. Memtest86 is not a
perfect testing program, and a further test is required once
the OS is installed. That is Prime95 (torture test option)
from mersenne.org . Prime95 is good for testing with more
heat and electrical noise in the system, as sometimes memory
that passes memtest86, still gets errors when the OS is
running. (I have some memory that does that - Prime95 finds
trouble in 30 minutes or less.)
With respect to the Asus recommended list, we don't know what
method they use to determine that a memory is recommended. If
they only own four sticks of memory for one brand/model number,
to do their testing, then that would not be a statistically
significant sample. They do not document how they do the test.
The results in some cases are ridiculous (like when 1 stick
works, 4 sticks work, but a 2 stick configuration doesn't work).
Asus also has a habit of listing memory that is no longer
manufactured (such as Winbond BH-5 chips) or they list part
numbers that are simply not in circulation (engineering
samples). Many other suppliers of lists, will tell you what
their qualification criterion is, but not Asus. (Intel, for
example, qualifies memory based on specifications, rather than
trying to test quality into their DDR400 memory list.)
I hate to generalize, but both the Nforce2 motherboards, and
the Athlon64 boards are picky about memory. Empirically, it
would seem than not just any company can design good memory
controllers. In your current situation, what this means, is
either you get lucky and find a cheap memory that just happens
to work with the Athlon64, or you buy some CAS2 memory and
pay extra.
About all I can suggest, is buy your memory from a retailer
that allows exchange within a reasonable period, so that if
you are having problems with a picky motherboard/CPU combo,
you can find something that works. This newsgroup is not really
a good place to collect RAM recommendations, as the active
membership is not large enough to get a good answer in a
short time. A better place to look, would be the private
forums, like pcper.com, abxzone.com, nforcershq.com and so
on. Occasionally, you can find a thread on one of those
forums, where they conduct a poll of the users as to what
works and what doesn't work. That kind of a thread is
gold, because it reduces your research time a lot.
Paul
