GA-P35-DQ6, 4GB Ballistix (1066MHz) - Prime95 now fails?

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ReelMcCoy

Limp Gawd
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Jun 10, 2004
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Looking for suggestions. :\ I built a system using Gigabyte's GA-P35-DQ6, 4 sticks of Ballistix 1066MHz DDR2, G0 Q6600 with lapped Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, PCP&C 750W power supply, EVGA 8800GTX and the usuals (dvd burner, etc). All stashed in an older Stacker. Stock clocks and voltages since I live in a warmer climate and have two other systems running. Even with AC, it can get warm. :) Still, the Q6600 never went past 51C loaded.

Anyway, the first week to two weeks, I'd run Prime95 overnight with numerous 12+ hour runs without issue. I'm running 64 bit Vista and the latest drivers for everything I can. Last night I experienced my first BSOD in Vista after stopping a stalled Windows update. Since then, other apps seem to bomb that were once stable. With Prime95, one or more cores will stop after a few minutes. MemTest86+ V1.70 will fail memory test #5 with all four sticks installed.

I've tested each stick individually for 2 passes without problems. Two paired sticks without problems. Also slapped a pair in each channel pair. No memory failures in MemTest86+. But four sticks and it'll fail. So I don't know if it's MemTest86+ and a limitation with 4GB of RAM or what. Microsoft's memory tester didn't fail but who trusts Microsoft. :)

The mobo does seem to be using the right SPD settings and DDR voltage. Outside of trying a fresh install of Vista, I'm not sure what else to do as I don't have other hardware to do the swap and test game. Any ideas?
 
Try upping the DRAM voltage 0.1 or 0.2 volts and see if the errors go away. ICs do age and change slightly and a slight voltage increase may solve your problem.
 
4 GB is twitchy, all there is to it.

I would set the ram voltage manually in the bios to the upper end of the manuf recommended voltage range, get this from the manuf website not an ad. If it is just rated at 1.8V give it 1.9V. (+.1)


FSB OverVoltage Control___ [+0.1V] <--- a little extra for stability
(G)MCH OverVoltage Control [+0.1V] <--- a little extra for stability

see if that helps, if not try one more notch (next increment) of MCH voltage.

You should take a look at this concerning test #5
http://forum.x86-secret.com/showthread.php?t=6660

As each stick tested good by itself I doubt a memory module is actually bad. I beleive it is a timing issue created by the longer signal path and buss loading created when using 4 sticks. I also would guess those sticks were matched pairs for 2 GB installs and thus might have sub timings that are just a hair too tight for 4 x 1GB installation.

It is interesting that you mention the sticks are running their SPD defauts. That should be 5 5 5 15 or 5 5 5 18. Are you sure of this ? Memset will tell you your current actual settings from within windows.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=92190

Armed with that tool and the information it provides you could/should go to Crucial and Gigabyte tech support and start seeing if they can help. er just talk to Crucial and keep pounding them, if they sell a 4 GB kit ask how the sub timings differ from the 2 GB kit (and if not why not ? ), what sub timing would be most likely to cause a problem with a 4 stick configuration (i.e. longer buss ) .


Lastly, I would not fixate on the memory too awful much and be sure everthing else is ok, think again, you changed absolutely nothing ?? Maybe so but double check.


Good luck.
 
I've always tried to stay away from using all 4 memory slots on any motherboard. Even though they put four slots on the boards, people seem to have problems when using all four. When we went 4 gig last time, I bought two 2gig sticks. In the past with other motherboards I've heard some people say that if you go with 4 sticks they have to be single sided sticks. Are your sticks single sided?
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give the voltage tweaks a whirl shortly and check out the urls as well. These sticks are matched pairs from 2 2GB kits. I'm not sure if they're single sided or double.

As for using all four memory slots, there is a point to that. I may look for a good pair of 2GB sticks and go that route to achieve 4GB. I do plan on having a few VMs loaded for software development and if I EVER touch Lightwave3D again...

As for SPD checks, I've looked at the values in the BIOS (CTRL-F1) and they were spot on.

As for not swapping anything else out, I don't have spares at the moment. Any spares I do build up tend to find their way in another system. :D I may buy a video card and try that today as well should the tweaks not work.

One beef I have with the DQ6 BIOS is I'd much rather see "DDR Voltage" to tell me what voltage it's at and what I can set it to rather than the +x business. I was looking all over the BIOS to try and make sure sure it was 2.2V and ended up just letting Vista boot and check out what Everest said. :\

Thanks again for all the replies. Time to try some tweaks...
 
Here's an update. Tried tweaking the voltages after verifying the 533MHz SPD profile settings. Couldn't get MemTest's #5 to pass no matter what I did although I didn't go beyond a certain point with the voltages. I may try some more tweaking to see if I can find something that works but I stepped down to the 400MHz profile (4-4-4-12). Had to tweak the DDR voltage though as it insisted on using the JDEC profile's 1.8V rather than 2.2. MemTest's #5 went on for a couple hours with no failures. Prime95 is running beyond 5 minutes so far.

I'll have to get with Crucial but for the time being, I'll let Prime95 run overnight. Too bad I didn't run memory benchmarks @ 533MHz to see if there's much of a hit. But returning to stability is a good thing.
 
One last follow-up. I took another stab at getting running at 1066 working again but couldn't find a stable point. Looking at forum messages on various ram manufacturer's sites, I might have been pretty lucky to even run at 1066 for as long as I did with 4 sticks. Most seem to say run at 800 instead. I've also priced and specced some 2 DIMM 4GB kits to perhaps go that route. Just trying to decide between the choices. :)

For the time being, I've got the 4 sticks running at 800 with 4-4-4-12 and 2.2V for the enhanced profile and MemTest flies through test 5. Prime95 has been running for the past 20 hours without issue. Stability has returned.
 
Good to see you have it working at least at 800. People often want to blame the motherboards at first but it seems that memory ends up being the problem more often than not.
 
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