Magnus Brading
Almighty Author

Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2751
Joined: Aug. 2002 |
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Posted: Aug. 16 2003,00:34 |
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I'm putting it together myself, yes, but I'll be damned to take any responsibility. 
I have replaced the ram modules now, and at first glance it seems to work better at least... *keeping fingers crossed*
Did anyone of you know that with DDR400 memories, not all motherboards are compatible with all memory brands, although they are all the same standard?!? They are pushing the limits of the memories so far, that apparently timing issues cause such problems. 
I have an Asus motherboard (the meanest one they've got, of course, P4C800 Deluxe ), and on their website, they actually have a list of "qualified memory vendors" of DDR400 ram memories. I bet that most people are not at all aware of this list (and not many retailers either, mine wasn't).
I myself actually was aware of it, but my nice retailer took the liberty of replacing the Samsung memories I had ordered with ("non-qualified") Kingston memories (that were even more expensive) without asking me about it... And just as expected, these did not work properly together with the motherboard. They got random bit errors due to timing problems, even after adjusting all memory timing parameters manually on the motherboard, maxing them all out. With all parameters maxed like this, there was about one bit error per 10 GB of data passing through the memory or so. Just enough to cause completely illogical periodical crashes and errors, and transparent bit errors in files on the harddisk... If I wouldn't have gotten these bit errors much more frequently than that before modifying the memory timing parameters in the BIOS, it would have been complete and utter hell to make sense of the problems and trace them to memory malfunction (although it would of course be suspected, together with about a thousand other things), just thinking about it makes me shudder...
So, if anyone of you are planning to buy a system with DDR400 memory, be sure to thoroughly check the motherboard vendor's website for a (well-hidden) list of "qualified memory vendors", or you're in for a royal screwing...
-------------- Software author and website owner
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