Further M7NCD Ultra problems

Claritone · nFHQ Member

Hi again, I managed to fix my last problem but now I have another....

prior to this post by about 72 hours my spec's were as follows

640mb pc2100 ddr ram (kingston, 256 256 128)
amd athlon t-bird 1.4ghz
geforce 3 ti-200
maxtor 200gb and western digital 80gb

current settings are same as before with the exception of:
amd athlon XP 2900+

I was having some problems with this setup, i'd be doing memory intensive things such as rendering or game playing, and my computer would suddenly reboot, or it would just lock up. It happend about 4 times in 1 day, and then everything sort of died on me.

Computer would not load windows, and then shortly afterwards it would not boot up at all. I then deduced to check on hardware. I unplugged everything but 1 stick of ram, the video card, and the processor. it loaded. I then proceeded to include all 3 sticks, it did not load. I came to the conclusion my 128 seems to have fried, this is acceptable. Fast forwarding a few tests and about 12 hours to this point, only my single DIMMA slot works for ram now, my 128 is of course broke, and both of my 256's work in the DIMMA slot, but none of the sticks in any concievable order of single or pairs work in the DIMMB slots.

I believed it was a bios problem, so i used my second computer to download the bios files to a floppy, and upgraded my first computer to the latest, the 12/12 ones i believe, the newest on biostar's homepage. No go. I have tested and verified 2 power supplies and neither fix the problem. When I have one, or two sticks in the DIMMB slots and turn on the power, it turns on the fans, lights blink, but it does not show anything beyond. not the usual startup, or even the usual message about the video card. Ive reset the bios multiple times, tried configuring the FSB and voltages, and even took the cmos battery out for hours and still nothing.

Claritone · nFHQ Member

extensive testing revealed some more confusing results

DIMMA will let me load my computer at full speed, at these settings DIMMB1/2 do not work. dual channel or single

if i set memory frequency to run ram at 200 instead of 266, i can run 1 stick in DIMMB1/2 and one in DIMMA, but no second stick in the DIMMB channel

both of the above tests, FSB was running at 400mhz. if I only have 1 stick in DIMMB1/2 at these settings it will not start up, however if i set FSB to 200mhz, I can load 1 ram stick in DIMMB or DIMMA, but not both and not 2 in DIMMB

very confusing, latest bios too, any idea's?

best assumption I can come up with is when windows crashed on me, 1 of those times it either fried my ram, or fried something in my mainboard that handled ram processing

kylesb · nLightened

A Tbird 1.4G CPU is rated for 133/266 Mhz FSB, are you running this speed?

Also, I had odd things happen with my Tbird 1.4 in a Biostar M7NCD Pro and the odd problems disappeared when I changed the CPU to an Athlon XP2500-M running at 200FSB @11x or 2200Mhz. The odd thing that happened to me occured with an SBLive 5.1 sound card running with the Tbird at 1400 Mhz (std spec, 266 Mhz FSB, 1400 MHz CPU speed). I had to underclock the Tbird to get things to work nicely, IIRC I underclocked to about 129 or 130 Mhz on the FSB. Otherwise I enountered odd lockups with the SBLive card in the system. Looked to me to be some sort memory or PCI bus timing problem. A Tbird 1.4 has different drive strengths required for the memory interface (these drive strength parameters are controlled by resistors attached to certain CPU pins) versus Athlon XP CPUs. When the resistors are setup for XP CPUs, the result is less compatibility with the older Tbird CPUs, particularly the highest speed 1.4G Tbirds.

Try using this setup:

Run the memory and FSB in sync, use 133/266 memory speed, and std multi for CPU, see what happens with your memory/dimm experiments. HTH

Edit: Oops, all of my comments are probably not appropriate since I just reread your post and note you are using an Athlon 2900+. However, if you are not running at stock speeds, I'd suggest trying that first. Is the 2900+ rated for 200 MHz FSB? Also, look at the capacitors near the CPU, are any leaking or bulging?

Claritone · nFHQ Member

the only time the processor runs at its intended speed is at 400mhz fsb
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=AXDA2900DKV4E-N

no leaking of bulging of the capacitors, nothing smells burnt either.

ive tested my brothers ram, 400mhz corsair, wont even boot up on my computer, ive tested 2 power supplies, they both work. it seems like my board is just dead when it comes to using multiple memory sticks

Claritone · nFHQ Member

Took out the 2900+ since i thought i may be able to get better results with the Athlon T-Bird 1.4ghz, but they were the exact same

if FSB is set to 100mhz in the cmos, and memory is also set to 100, then i can run any of my 3 pc2100 ddr sticks in any of the DIMMA/B slots, and as usual if memory frequency is set to 133mhz then only the DIMMA slot seems to work