What is this a symptom of???

[jalbs]

Ok I have 2gb of ram and have tested both pairs by themselves so 1 gb at a time with the same results. I can rule out memory as a problem but I see this symptom at a 220 fsb for memory and cpu or stock speeds. Playing a game my comp will appear to freeze then after 2-10 seconds the monitor will go black and refresh and everything appears to be normal but eventually it will freeze. What is this "refresh of the monitor" I had the same monitor for my old comp and the problem doesn't occur. This becomes more frequent with the overclock and this monitor is a 1997 hitachi 21 inch 5,000lb monitor. Can a monitor cause problems? Since it is an output stream I would imagine no its not possible maybe I am wrong with refresh capabilities..etc. Please help I am going nuts. One word of note is running a divider appears to be more stable 4:3(memory at 166fsb) but I am not sure about this but just an observation. My PSU is a aspire concord and I thought it was better then a stock POS. The rails don't appear to be right on and I am not about to get inside and mess around unless it has a dummy knob for adjustments.

I am thinking of getting a decent Antec PSU to rule it out but thats $100 if I am wrong, maybe mobo? Also I am running 2 10,000rpm raptors in RAID 0 and as a side note they benchmark right up there with SCSI in the same configuration according to Sandra.

Please please help as I want this to run fast just because I hate to fail. BTW here are the full specs:

A7v880 MB
2gb 4x 512 pc4000 patriot rated at 3-4-4-8 t1 or something like that
barton 3000+ 400fsb
Thermaltake case(nice case I must solid as a rock, not sure why people trash them)
CPU cooling is good always under 40 at full load with 1.3ghz overclock

NOTE: If I run all 2gb of ram at once the memory controller appears to do a decent job but defaults to 333 speeds where 1gb goes to single channel 400 speeds.

Odd Note: just got my thinkpad as IBM employee and it runs at 5:3 divider with 1gb or 2gb of ram at 166fsb.

 

[Six]

its a limitation of the memory controler. you need one of the newer cores inorder to use all 4 at over 333

 

[jalbs]

yeah but I have been only running 2x512, so that isn't the main problem with the stability. Also, I have run both sets of ram with same results so its not like I had 1 2x512 pair that was bad unless both pairs are bad.

 

[kirbyrj]

its a limitation of the memory controler. you need one of the newer cores inorder to use all 4 at over 333

It can't be the on-die memory controller because he's talking about a Barton

Although my guess would be that the motherboard memory controller (KT880?) doesn't like 4 DS dimms. That seems to be why it would work with 2x512 but not with 4x512. I'd check the manual to see if it will work with that many DS dimms.

 

[Eck]

I read somewhere that with this board the memory goes back to 333fsb if using more than 2 modules.