Memory Problems

[RAID]

i'm having problems with my memory (Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-1066) being stable at their rated speed 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 at 2.2v. their performance is fine at 800Mhz 3-3-3-9 at 2.2v but when i enable 'sli memory' in the bios which sets the speed to 1066Mhz, my computer is unstable.

- i get random and repeating crashes/bsod/reboots during normal computer usage (not gaming). that was my first symptom.
- i ran 3dmark twice to see if it would at least make it through the benchmark... nope and nope.
- i ran memtest and let it go thru all tests twice and i ended up with over 20k errors... a pretty good indication something is wrong here.

i then set the speed back to 800Mhz, all is well. it passed memtest with no errors, SC is fine and 3dmark ran great. i want to add that enabling 'sli memory' in the bios was the only way i've found to get the memory to run at 1066Mhz. i initially tried to raise the speed by unlinking the cpu-memory, but i was only able to get it stable at around 950Mhz 5-5-5-15 at 2.2v.

is it time to RMA or is it user error? any help is appreciated!

[qazwsx]

so it wont run at 1066Mhz 5-5-5-15 at 2.2v? if not then RMA it. its not doing what its rated to do.

[Dread]

I haven't used that memory or board before, but remember reading that some of the i680 boards needed an updated BIOS to run the 'SLI' memory enhancement or some such. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on this will step up with the facts?

[Quakindude]

Can you manually set the timings, voltage and speed to 1066 and they work properly?

My EVGA 680i borks out with SLI memory enabled as well. The current Bios is P30, but I'm still with P23. I haven't had time to mess with updating the Bios yet. I plan on getting a lot of computer things done in the coming week.

EVGA's website has a lot of information about the 680i's. Problems with that board have been pretty standard across the manufacturers lines.

[RAID]

i've been running a recent bios released in july. i checked the asus website and there was one update since so i installed that one and got the same results.

my bios does allow me to manually set timings and that was one of the first things i tried. i could not remain stable over 950MHz 5-5-5-15 @ 2.2v. i played around with it for several days and just could not get my system stable at the rated memory speed.

i contacted crucial yesterday thru their live chat and after a few minutes chatting with the the tech online, she told me to call their 1-800 number and speak with the 'next level' tech support. i explained my situation to the second tech and after answering a few questions he immediately transferred me to their customer support dept to set up an RMA.

the cust support guy got my info and told me they wouldn't have any of my particular RAM in until monday so i will mail it in tomorrow or thursday.

in the mean time, i ordered a corsair 8500C5D kit to hold me over while i'm waiting for my tracers to arrive. maybe i can put together a dominator vs ballistix face off article?!

[Yellowhello]

Sound like Crucial customer support is very good.

[Capper]

Crucial customer support is awesome.

I'm not a big fan of the SLI memory......while if used correctly it can help inexperienced users, I find that it generally, depending on the setting, too aggressive for most kits. If anything, i set it to "Expert" and tinker from there, as the "OC" settings are a real pain.. I'm pretty sure your issue is a secondary memory latency adjusted too aggressively.

On a separate note, those of you who like the feature, and the other 680i memory settings will love the X38, it will have features much like those found on the NVIDIA boards. I'm not sure if it will use the same "SLI Memory" that NVIDIA does, as INTEL boards don't support SLI, but there are a number of memory enhancements that should make overclocking much easier.

[Yellowhello]

Like unlinked RAM and CPU OCing?

[Quakindude]

Have you tried running it with EPP turned off?

Also, are you using Vista?

[RAID]

no, i stopped using vista several weeks ago.

i initially tried to get it to 1066 just by unlinking and raising the speed while loosening the timing. i set the voltage to 2.2v. the highest speed it would remain stable at was 950mhz 5-5-5-15. anything higher than 975mhz and it would not get past the bios screen.

after that, i enabled epp and it did boot up fine at 1066mhz 5-5-5-15 @ 2.2v but started acting up almost immediately with sudden bsod and random reboots.

edit: the dominators came in so i sent the tracers back this morning for RMA. after installing the corsair sticks, they hit 1066mhz with no problems. i ran memtest with the memory set at 1066 manually and by using epp with no problems or issues.