Anyone from scan, can you help me?

[britstu]

Hi there

I seem to have a problem with either my memory or the mobo.

I've just built a new system using the following....

AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (new from Scan)
Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P (new from Scan)
500 GB Seagate ST3500418AS Barracuda 7200.12
512MB XFX HD 4770
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair TwinX DDR2 XMS2, PC2-8500 (new from Scan)

I've also got 2 dvd drives and a total of 3 hard drives but currently only 1 dvd and 1 hd to reduce the power at the mo to be on the safe side. (500w psu)

I have tried clean installs in both Win 7 and XP pro 64 but still can't seem to get my ram working at correct speed.

In the bios it only sees it as ddr2 800 and not 1066
I have flashed to the latest bios F5 but this desn't seem to make any difference.

When i run easytune in win 7 it says my memory is pc6400 NOT pc8500.

I have tried switching on EPP and also setting the memory manually, but when I do this windows won't run and I get BSOD.

Also when I boot up occasionally it will post then not carry on after listing the processor.

Any help wouyld be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for sort of repeating this post but don't think I was in the correct forum

Cheers

[divinemadness]

I suspect it may be down to the fact the X3 720 runs with a bus speed of 200MHz (2800MHz/14x multiplier=200)

This means any RAM speeds are likely to based from there, ie. multiples of 200 - so it's running at 800MHz, PC2-6400 speeds.

When you are switching it to run at 1066, it's quite possibly either overclocking the CPU (to 3.7GHz) or running the RAM in a divider, though if it were a divider it should work really.

Try CPU-Z and post screenshots of the RAM pages, that will give a better idea of it is PC2-8500 running at PC2-6400 speeds, or actually just PC2-6400 for some reason.

edit - i'm not from Scan though, i'm just feeling helpful

[britstu]

Thanks for your reply.
I can't get it to run long enough to get cpu-z open when i get ram to 1066.
I can however get it working with the memory running 800 but don't know how to post the screenshots. Sorry if i'm being a bit stupid

[divinemadness]

Assuming you can save the screenshots (at 800MHz should be fine) ok, upload them to somewhere like imageshack or tinypic, who will then provide a list of links you can simply copy and paste into here.

[britstu]

OK here goes...

[divinemadness]

That's the ticket, though the screens from the tabs called Memory and SPD are what we want to see!

[britstu]

and again...







There you go

[Infinite]

You have set the voltage up to 2.1 right?

[divinemadness]

Well, the part number is correct and the SPD info is there for the timings at 1066.

I think what you're getting is the RAM running synchronously with the FSB (almost, 1:2 ratio) which is why you have the PC2-6400 bandwidth, it's running at those speeds.

I couldn't tell you exactly what to change to get the RAM running at 1066 without forcing the CPU to overclock on a Phenom system but it will probably be more to do with dividers. Just setting your RAM to 1066 is probably overclocking the CPU at the same time depending on how you are doing it, causing the instability.

Personally, i'd just leave it as it is, you won't notice any difference running the RAM at 1066 on an odd divider compared to just at 800MHz, other than maybe a couple of points in a benchmark somewhere.

Just means in retrospect, with more research/understanding you could probably have bought PC2-6400 RAM for a few quid less.

[britstu]

You have set the voltage up to 2.1 right?

Yes. I tried setting to EPP auto and EPP voltage to auto. Also tried setting everything manually. Still the same thing happens though BSOD

[Infinite]

You can memtest to see on the odd chance that it is faulty.
I guess you can just leave it and tighten the timing to 4-4-4-12 (maybe even lower) to increase the performance.
Make a thread in Hardware section and post a link to here. More tech people hang out there, so they may have a solution/ inside knowledge. Ive always been sucky at AMD stuff. Q.Q

[divinemadness]

Just having a look at the manual for that board, in the BIOS, under the DRAM config page, you have a couple of options near the top. (page 40 onwards)

CPU Host Clock Control - [Auto]
CPU Frequency MHz - 200
Set Memory Clock - [Auto]
Memory Clock - x2.00 - 400MHz

Something like that.

I think ideally you want it to say

Memory Clock - x2.66 - 533MHz.

if it doesn't already.

How were you changing it to 1066?

[britstu]

Thanks for your help...

OK just tried it again just setting in bios....

EPP to auto
EPP Voltage Control to By EPP

It booted up OK and ran long enough for me to run CPU-Z and grab screenshots

Just when I tried to post them it crashed and rebooted. Then I put the settings back to EPP mode off, saved settings and restart only to get BSOD with reason... STOP _ 0x0000007 etc... And PARTCLS.SYS - Address etc....
Restart again then fine

Would be very annoying if I can't ever run pc8500 after paying extra for them

[britstu]

oh i forgot to post pic....

[divinemadness]

hmmm... strangely, the max bandwidth has stayed at 6400 in the SPD tab - that doesn't sound right to me.

Does it say that for Slot #1 and the other slot you've used?

[britstu]

yep slot 1 & 2 identical