On Thursday, 31 March 2005 at 10:59:02 -0800, David O'Brien wrote: > On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 11:24:29AM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >> On Thursday, 31 March 2005 at 10:32:33 +0930, Daniel O'Connor wrote: >>> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:14, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >>>>> Have you run sysutils/memtest86 with the 8 GB? >>>> >>>> Heh. Difficult when the system doesn't run. >>> >>> You could try http://www.memtest86.com although that doesn't do >4Gb >> :( >> >> I'm pretty sure it's not the memory. I've tried each pair >> individually, and it's only when they're both in there together that >> it's a problem. And yes, I've tried them in each pair of slots. > > You have a dual-channel memory controller. If you insert one DIMM you > perform 64-bit data accesses. If you install DIMM's in pairs (making > sure you're using the right "paired" sockets), you perform 128-bit data > accesses. Thus your access pattern is different between these two > situations. I'm highly suspious that you can us 4x2GB DIMM's with out > knowing the exact part number. Don't forget 2GB DIMM's are > double-stacked and thus look like double the electrical bus loads. The > same is true for older 1GB DIMM's.
This looks like it's the issue. > Install all the memory you would like to use into your motherboard, > download memtest86+ version 1.40 from http://www.memtest.org, dd to > floppy or burn the ISO, and report back your findings from running > it. Done that. It was quite revealing. This particular motherboard and BIOS supply either "ECC off" or "ECC in chip kill mode". Mine was off, and I got many errors. With 4 GB (any two chips) and chip kill mode enabled, I ran memtest86+ for about 18 hours and got about 1 ECC error per second. With 8 GB, with or without chip kill, neither FreeBSD, memtest86+ nor Linux run reliably: memtest86+ spontaneously reboots every 5 minutes or so. I borrowed this memory to test the motherboard, and it's going back this week anyway. I now have my own memory :-(all 1 GB of it), and it tests perfectly. The memory I had the trouble with works perfectly in the machine for which it was purchased, so it does indeed look like an electrical loading problem. The moral of the story is, I suppose, "don't buy the MSI K8T Master2-FAR". I was warned about the motherboard before I bought it, but at the time it was the only game in town. Now I know of other places with (hopefully) better boards. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
pgpTvRjcpU4Il.pgp
Description: PGP signature