First post, by RacoonRider
- Rank
- Oldbie
Here's the system:
AthlonXP 3200+
Gigabyte GA-7N400S motherboard (nforce4U)
DRAM slots 1,2: 512Mb PC3200 Kingston KVR400X4C3A/512
DRAM slot 3: 1GB PC3200 from Hynix (no model number)
+ Radeon 9800 Pro and Audigy 2ZS not that I think it's relevant.
I have issues in memory-intensive games. For example, in GTA III many minutes of excellent performance are always followed by long FPS drops as if the game tries to load an area and fails and tries again and again. I did not address the issue for a long time, but yesterday I decided to go through a few runs of memtest86 to check if it's memory-related. I have several other DDR sticks to test, so I added them here as well.
Here are the results:
0. DRAM1+DRAM2+DRAM3: test failed, First error bit: always around 510 Mb, last error bit: always around 1000Mb.
1. DRAM1: any stick I have passes.
2. DRAM2: Kingston sticks from this machine pass, did not try anything else.
3. DRAM3: any stick I have fails. First error bit: 0Mb, last error bit is always around 512Mb.
4. DRAM1+DRAM2, Kingston+Kingston: passes.
5. DRAM1+DRAM2, Kingston+Hynix: test failed, First error bit: always around 510 Mb, last error bit: always around 1000Mb.
From the above I draw a conclusion that I should stick to 1Gb of memory and KVR400 modules. Sadly, no Dual-Channel, since any stick in DRAM3 fails. Also no big 1Gb modules, since my motherboard seems to chronically dislike RAM over 1 Gb.
Is there any way to actually address the issue? The PC feels crippled that way(although I know it isn't, 1Gb is quite a lot for 2004). I have checked the slots, they have no visual defects, no damaged components in vicinity. Caps look normal, but they are 16 years old, so I might actually need to recap. I can do the thing myself, but there's a decent chance it's not going to help.