Santa brought me 1Gb TwinMOS duakl channel kit...

[old.user4556]

...in which one of the 512 Mb sticks doesn't work

Bought from overclockers.co.uk (typical faulty sending place). Put the ram in with my 2400+ Athlon, booted into windows no problem. Loaded an app, bluescreened. Rebooted, bluescreened again. Rebooted, PC just hangs or reboots half way through the windows load process.

Gr8 m8.

Wondered if it was because it was something to do with it being a dual channel kit. Fitted the Barton 3200+, can't even get into windows and just randomly reboots during the windows load process.

Went back to the original processor with one stick of ram and the PC wouldn't even POST. Fitted the other stick of ram instead and it booted into windows no problem.

Looks like a most definitely screwed stick of ram.

Am i missing something though?

Mobo is an Abit AN7.

G

 

[Xavier]

no, it sounds fubar mate.... I just had the same problem with two of the four sticks of registered ddr in my athlon64fx

if you put one stick in and it works, but the other doesn't then one stick is sadly, faulty

 

[old.user4556]

gr8

i need to be held

So far, goosed stuff from overclockers is: my mate's A7N8X, my other mate's 9800SE (replaced quickly) and now my ram.

fs

G

 

[Xavier]

Only thing I've risked buying from OcUK was a CPU cooler, thinking it would be hard for them to cock up a lump of metal and fan - but they did...

although it was 'sealed', the wrong product was in the box and the fan was pretty much shattered, took a lot of heated words to get them to honor their responsability too

 

[Deadmanwalking]

...in which one of the 512 Mb sticks doesn't work

Bought from overclockers.co.uk (typical faulty sending place). Put the ram in with my 2400+ Athlon, booted into windows no problem. Loaded an app, bluescreened. Rebooted, bluescreened again. Rebooted, PC just hangs or reboots half way through the windows load process.

Gr8 m8.

Wondered if it was because it was something to do with it being a dual channel kit. Fitted the Barton 3200+, can't even get into windows and just randomly reboots during the windows load process.

Went back to the original processor with one stick of ram and the PC wouldn't even POST. Fitted the other stick of ram instead and it booted into windows no problem.

Looks like a most definitely screwed stick of ram.

Am i missing something though?

Mobo is an Abit AN7.

G

When i was forced to reinstall XP on this machine i had a similar probem. It would Bluescreen and restart during the install process. I cranked down the FSB and it installed fine (Even though it was now a 2200+).#

Installed/patched windows etc etc and then turned the FSB back up to its proper setting. All fine and dandy.

 

[Xavier]

Still something up there dude, you shouldn't have to go below stock settings for any reason...

 

[Clown]

Gr8 m8

Ahh, you used it properly
/me wipes a tear from his eye

 

[old.user4556]

i thought of you clown

 

[old.user4556]

Oddly enough, this Barton 3200+ has two (default) settings in my BIOS: 11x166 or 2500+ (~1800 MHz) and 11x200 or 3200+ (2200 MHz).

My old ram is 2 x 256Mb Crucial PC2100 Ram. I figured this would work with the Barton with a 133 FSB and 11 multiplier. This is an overall slow speed, so I thought "what the hell" and set it to 166 x 11 thinking there was no way it would work.

But it does (?). PC2100 @ 166 MHz ? Didn't think this was possible.

Any thoughts?

G

 

[Xavier]

no, it's easily possible, memory is sold at a guaranteed speed and all you're talking about is a 25% overclock beyond that


Glad to hear you're using the Barton now tho, any appreciable difference?

Xav

 

[old.user4556]

no, it's easily possible, memory is sold at a guaranteed speed and all you're talking about is a 25% overclock beyond that


Glad to hear you're using the Barton now tho, any appreciable difference?

Xav

Not had a lot of time to benchmark it, but the main obvious difference is that it's running a lot cooler than my thoroughbred which was a 2400+ (133 x 15 2000 MHz), which I had overclocked to a 2600+ ish (133 x 16 2130 MHz).

I don't expect the performance difference to be huge until im running at full 3200+ speeds. Even with it running at 2500+ (166 x 11 1830 MHz) my PC feels a lot slicker e.g. boot time seems faster, windows is slicker, certain unreleased game techdemo is smoother *ahem* probably due to the increased memory bandwidth.

G

 

[throdgrain]

Ive bought a Netgear ADSL router, an XP2600+ cpu, a gig of ram and a 9800 pro from OcUK, and Ive never had any problems with any of it.

 

[Xavier]

Not had a lot of time to benchmark it, but the main obvious difference is that it's running a lot cooler than my thoroughbred which was a 2400+ (133 x 15 2000 MHz), which I had overclocked to a 2600+ ish (133 x 16 2130 MHz).

I don't expect the performance difference to be huge until im running at full 3200+ speeds. Even with it running at 2500+ (166 x 11 1830 MHz) my PC feels a lot slicker e.g. boot time seems faster, windows is slicker, certain unreleased game techdemo is smoother *ahem* probably due to the increased memory bandwidth.

G

Not to mention the additional cache memories in the barton core

 

[old.user4556]

Ive bought a Netgear ADSL router, an XP2600+ cpu, a gig of ram and a 9800 pro from OcUK, and Ive never had any problems with any of it.

Likewise Throddy,

I've ordered from the, for years. I've bought so far:

GF4 Ti4400
Asus A7V266 Mobo
Athlon 1.4
Athlon 2400+
Athlon 3200+
512 Mb PC2100 Ram + older ram i can't remember
Radeon 9800 Pro
Abit AN7 Mobo
Logitech Internet keyboard special edition
Logitech MX500 mouse
Lian Li full tower
WD 120 Gb caviar
Enermax 350W psu
+ other misc stuff like drive cables, CD/DVD drives, CDRW drives and so on

Just out of the blue, myself and two mates got duff stock. Then on further research, I see other people have had problems with oc.co.uk stock.

I've been fine, until now.

G

 

[Xavier]

A few dissatisfied customers here...

also-

Earlier this year, when I was still scribbling for PCZone we did a Watchdog feature on OcUK as we'd been deluged in complaints from dissatisfied customers.

When we contacted them to offer a chance to respond, the first reply we got was an official looking email threatening court action if we printed anything, next thing we know my Editor and the Group Editor were getting extremely abusive phone calls from the alleged owner of the company, calling them every name under the sun . He was determined that they weren't who they said they were and that it was all a conspiracy - and when he was finally convinced totally went to ground, comms blackout.

Pity for them that we didn't give a shit, and ran the first of many complaints against them in April... heh

They seem to have a very simple tactic of threatening to sue anyone who says an ill word against them. More than one website complaining about their poor customer service has been taken offline after threats of legal action, which are just too much trouble for most to bother.

Xav

 

[old.user4556]

no, it's easily possible, memory is sold at a guaranteed speed and all you're talking about is a 25% overclock beyond that


Glad to hear you're using the Barton now tho, any appreciable difference?

Xav

Ok, 166 MHz is not too much of an overclock - but would you believe me that it clocked to 200 MHz fsb??

Well:

Now, it's been running like this the past 2 days without a hitch and some intense 3dmark2003 sessions. I'm wondering, is it truly running at 200 MHz, or is it some sort of mis-reporting?

Thoughts?

G

 

[Xavier]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but that's the sytem bus, not the memory bus, so that 400Mhz DDR is the CPU bus speed, not that of the memory. nForce2 is able to run memory and CPU both synchronously and asynchronously... whcih I think I mentioned when I suggested using the Barton even without the DDR400

If you install SiSoft Sandra run a memory benchmark and tell me what kind of scores you're seeing, I'd be interested to see the memory bandwidth, even if it's only running DDR266 across the memories.

 

[old.user4556]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but that's the sytem bus, not the memory bus, so that 400Mhz DDR is the CPU bus speed, not that of the memory. nForce2 is able to run memory and CPU both synchronously and asynchronously... whcih I think I mentioned when I suggested using the Barton even without the DDR400

If you install SiSoft Sandra run a memory benchmark and tell me what kind of scores you're seeing, I'd be interested to see the memory bandwidth, even if it's only running DDR266 across the memories.

Ahh gotcha, I'll run some benchies later today and post 'em up.

G

 

[old.user4556]

And our survey said!

You're right Xavier, it's still running at DDR266 MHz. I've selected PC133, PC2100, PC2700 and PC3200 all on VIA/Athlon boards for comparison. You can see clearly that the throughput it as expected and falls in line with the PC2100 memory of the reference stats.

Cheers

G

 

[Xavier]

And you've got two sticks of the same kind of 266Mhz DDR RAM in the board?

It's just that I'd expect you to get dual-channel benefits if so, I've not heard of any nForce2 boards disabling the dual-channel memory controller when running the CPU asynchronously from the memories. You might want to try slots 1 & 3 if you aren't using them already for a 2-dimm configuration.

 

[old.user4556]

And you've got two sticks of the same kind of 266Mhz DDR RAM in the board?

It's just that I'd expect you to get dual-channel benefits if so, I've not heard of any nForce2 boards disabling the dual-channel memory controller when running the CPU asynchronously from the memories. You might want to try slots 1 & 3 if you aren't using them already for a 2-dimm configuration.

Exactly the same 256 Mb PC2100 CL2.5 Crucial Ram. I'll give it a try, i'm currently using slots 1 & 2 for the memory.

G

 

[old.user4556]

Indeed, quite a significant boost with one stick of ram in slot 1 and the other in slot 3.

Damn, need my PC3200 ram replaced

 

[Xavier]

S'ok, I'll give myself the pat on the back for that one heh.

Glad it helped tho, more bandwidth is always a good thing

 

[Xavier]

Any luck as yet with overclockers?

Xav

 

[old.user4556]

Any luck as yet with overclockers?

Xav

Christ Xav, long story - patronising gimboid that works at overclockers rubbed me up the wrong way. Long story cut short, he's emailed me an RMA form to fill in and return. Once I have my RMA number, I'll send the memory off.

G

 

[Xavier]

Any update Mr G?

Xav

 

[old.user4556]

Any update Mr G?

Xav

Received an email yesterday saying "received your RMA and will be processed in due course".

I imagine they'll whack in the ram, see that the test rig won't even post and send out a new pack.

G

 

[Xavier]

Let me know if not and we'll document the debacle on teh webby

 

[old.user4556]

Let me know if not and we'll document the debacle on teh webby

Oh excellent, which reminds me i must add you to my MSN list for discussions - will do that after dinner.

G

 

[Xavier]

*salutes*