Memtest Results

[mike_w]

I've been having a few problems with my PC - the problems aren't serious, just some things crash that have never crashed before. Prime95 ran fine for a few hours.

I tried Memtest, and I got some weird results - I have two sticks of 512MB. In one combination, Memtest produces no errors. However, if I swap the sticks around, I start getting errors in Memtest. Does anybody have any ideas why this might be the case? Could it be the RAM causing some of the instability?

Thanks

Mike

[skuzgib]

Could it be the DIMM slot?

[mike_w]

Could it be the DIMM slot?

How so? I use the same DIMM slots both times, just different sticks of RAM.

Thanks

Mike

[Hans Voralberg]

Incompatibility between a stick of RAM and one slot ??

[Firelord]

Test the sticks seperately for errors as it could be stressing the dodgy DIMM less in the other slot.

[mike_w]

I have two sticks of RAM - one is TwinMOS, the other is Corsair Value Select.

After six tests, here are the results:

-TwinMOS in DIMM 3, Corsair in DIMM 2 No Errors
-TwinMOS in DIMM 2, Corsair in DIMM 3 Errors
-TwinMOS in DIMM 3 No Errors
-TwinMOS in DIMM 2 No Errors
-Corsair in DIMM 2 No Errors
-Corsair in DIMM 3 Errors

So whenever the Corsair Value Select stick is in DIMM 3, Memtest produces errors. Is this Memtest going wrong, or is there something wrong with the Corsair stick?

Thanks

Mike

[Firelord]

Would assume a faulty DIMM slot to me.

Can you test the memory in another board or ask a friend to test it?

[Olly1234]

Seems very odd that it'd only appear faulty when in slot 3 and not slot 2, there again perhaps there's some minute tollarance issue at work when that particular dimm is in that slott. What happens if you just fire up the PC with that Cosair in Slot 3 and then again with it just in slot 2?

[oralpain]

I would assume that nothing is (physically) wrong. Generally the farther from the cpu/northbridge you get, or the farther from the terminators/voltage regulators, the worse the signal is.

On my board, memory at 240Mhz, stick one in dimm1 and stick two in dimm3 work the best. Using any combination of sticks in dimms 1&2 produce errors at this speed, I also get a few errors with stick2 in dimm1 and stick1 in dimm3. My first stick of memory is the weaker of the two so I put it in the best slot. Note that your set up is probbaly different from mine, this is just an example.

You can try giving the memory more voltage, or changing the memory timings.

[pudds]

Perhaps the bios detects the default timings from slot 2. If The two sticks aren't rated with the same timings and you put the faster one in slot2 then the other stick will also be set to the same timings.

[mike_w]

Perhaps the bios detects the default timings from slot 2. If The two sticks aren't rated with the same timings and you put the faster one in slot2 then the other stick will also be set to the same timings.

Nope, they both have the same timings. I think I'll try the stick in another machine when I get the chance.

[Zak33]

i think its because the motherboard uses a kind of "buffer" for each slot, and sme "buffers" hate certain memory combos.

Best answer I can give...but I've had the EXACT same thing mate