Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Report your license and card asap

You ever actually tried to bypass Windoze activation?? Or are you really optimistic they're gonna come out with more support for your machine in the future???

The former- I'm working on that, I know.

The latter- they're legit upgrade discs, since I have a valid student ID (I am a student at the college) I can get win 7 upgrade discs for $20 a pop. The reason I don't just use another disc and skip activation till I find it is since it's an upgrade, the COA key won't work (you have to have had xp/vista on the hdd used for the install when windows setup begins). Not like XP and 2K, when the upgrade disc was a different image and one could be prompted to insert a previous windows disc to prove the upgrade.

[thesloc]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Report your license and card asap

You ever actually tried to bypass Windoze activation?? Or are you really optimistic they're gonna come out with more support for your machine in the future???

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Speaking of 7 x64, it seems that I misplaced my copy of 7 ulitmate upgrade for this thing... I bought a 3rd upgrade key from the college bookstore so I didn't have to scuttle V2 (as it's still a complete and running rig), but I may have to buy a 4th as I can't find it even if my life depended on it.

side note- been a bad day for losing shit... lost my debit card and DL today as well. F***ing perfect

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Just a hint with this board, if all DIMM's are populated, you can not run the RAM at full speed (400MHz), it will crash (BSoD0, fail MEMTEST, and cause all kinds of havoc. Its a bug in the chipset, and no fix. I had to turn the RAM clock down to 266 when I had 16gb in mine, 8x 2GB sticks. Removing 2, and it was fine at full speed.

I owe you big time. Good call. Stepped it down to 266, all is well with all 16gb.

So, I can pick either Faster RAM or more RAM.

Thoughts and ideas?

Edit- tried 333 and 366, no dice. I wonder if that's partially why V3.0 never ran well (I ran all 16GB at 400)... But given the AGP issues on all but Xp x64, It wasn't viable in the long run.

[gg1978]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Yup, that's a limitation of the Opteron's integrated DDR controller. If you have a board with 8 slots per CPU, it's limited to 266 so even slower.. Although it should auto drop the speed to 333 if all 4 are populated.. If you only have 4 working DIMM's i would put two per CPU, so you get the most speed at least for testing!!

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Just a hint with this board, if all DIMM's are populated, you can not run the RAM at full speed (400MHz), it will crash (BSoD0, fail MEMTEST, and cause all kinds of havoc. Its a bug in the chipset, and no fix. I had to turn the RAM clock down to 266 when I had 16gb in mine, 8x 2GB sticks. Removing 2, and it was fine at full speed.

There be my issue i bet.

I may bump it to 333 and try agian.

[Topcat]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Just a hint with this board, if all DIMM's are populated, you can not run the RAM at full speed (400MHz), it will crash (BSoD0, fail MEMTEST, and cause all kinds of havoc. Its a bug in the chipset, and no fix. I had to turn the RAM clock down to 266 when I had 16gb in mine, 8x 2GB sticks. Removing 2, and it was fine at full speed.

[gg1978]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

maybe do a test install of Win 7 x64?? you don't have to enter a product key, it'll let you run for a while without one, that way you could test stability before you buy any more RAM.. I did have 8 1G DIMM's in it, so i know all 8 DIMM slots should be good.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

It uses PC3200 ECC DDR1. I know, old and freaky, but it works and is low cost.

[thesloc]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Wait, mine is DDR2 PC2-3200 (IBM)

There's 2 2GB sticks, for a total of 4GBs.

Your machine uses ancient DDR, no?

[thesloc]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

It has the latest BIOS, 1.06, 11/'08

Memtest failed like crazy around 42%... just a constant string of failed addresses when I got back from work.

So yeah, the RAM is hosed, at least one module.

Also, one of the HDD's died today. it was the one with 26 Bad sectors (or so it was the last time I checked). Won't show up at BIOS. tried different controller ports, the onboard SATA, and different power connections and SATA cables. Dead as a doornail.

Not sure if I'll replace the dead drive or stick with the 3 and call it good. As for the RAM, I'll see if I still have an ebay seller warranty on it. edit- no such luck. Looks Like I'm stuck at 8GB unless I justify $$$ for another 8gb. I may have mishandled a couple modules when I was seeing if a board could do ECC, so this one is on me. I hope 8GB is enough.

Any feedback on whether to replace what died or to do without?

I have a couple of ECC modules, I can send them to you if you want since I'm pretty sure I'm not making much of use of them.

I *think* have them around somewhere, they're 2gb sticks, I think.

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Get some isopropyl alcohol, dab an plain unscented paper handkerchief in it and rub the memory module contacts to clean them.

Get a piece of A4 paper, bend it two or three times then drag it between the pins in the memory slots to rub away some oxides. Inspect the modules to make sure each pin is in the proper position and can flex a bit when you insert the ram, to make good contact.

If you have time, test each module one at a time to see which one fails... well, one on each cpu.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

It has the latest BIOS, 1.06, 11/'08

Memtest failed like crazy around 42%... just a constant string of failed addresses when I got back from work.

So yeah, the RAM is hosed, at least one module.

Also, one of the HDD's died today. it was the one with 26 Bad sectors (or so it was the last time I checked). Won't show up at BIOS. tried different controller ports, the onboard SATA, and different power connections and SATA cables. Dead as a doornail.

Not sure if I'll replace the dead drive or stick with the 3 and call it good. As for the RAM, I'll see if I still have an ebay seller warranty on it. edit- no such luck. Looks Like I'm stuck at 8GB unless I justify $$$ for another 8gb. I may have mishandled a couple modules when I was seeing if a board could do ECC, so this one is on me. I hope 8GB is enough.

Any feedback on whether to replace what died or to do without?

[thesloc]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

You're probably running an outdated bios if that much ram isn't supported, if at all.

Or check the configurations.

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

You could just open the power supply and measure the current taken out of 3.3v ...

If there's an inductor for the 3.3v rail (pi filter at the output) just desolder one of its legs and put the multimeter in series with the inductor.

With such a motherboard, I kinda doubt they're using 3.3v to power the ram - it makes more sense to just use 12v for everything, for better efficiency.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

I think I found the issue, kinda. It will run with 4gb or 8gb of ram, but with 16gb it doesn't get far. Memtesting all 16gb while I'm at work for an hour, I'll see what happens when I get back

As for the 3.3v issue- any psu suggestions?

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

I still think the 3.3V rail on the PSU might be getting overloaded, those old high voltage ECC sticks use a lot of power, especially in memtest

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Did you install sli bridge? If so remove it maybe it will work then?

Tried it already, no dice.

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Windows xp 64bit is basically using the Windows 2003 kernel, so anything validated/certified for Windows 2003 64bit should run on Windows XP 64bit as well.

But I don't understand why you'd HAVE to use Windows XP... I basically had Windows 2000 on my home computer, then skipped straight to Windows 2003 Standard Edition and now I'm using Windows 7.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, I still had a dedicated server in a datacenter with windows 2003 web 64bit and it was working fine.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V3.5

Reseat the RAM. And your may need a VDIMM bump.