New computer still not working - blame the mobo?

[vfrex]

Okay so the specs WERE

MSI k7n2 ILSR Delta Mobo (nforce2)
AMD xp 2800
(2) 512 sticks of kingston 3200 value ram
120 gig seagate hd
36 gig raptor hd
ati sapphire radeon 9800 pro 128 megs
Lite On DVD Rom
Lite ON CD/RW
Sony Floppy Drive

If you remember, we were having the problem "IRQ_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL". We found out that the motherboard was very picky about memory. So I took a look at Crucial ram, which lists the different sticks of ram that would work with each mobo. They listed 512 sticks of 2700 ram to work with my exact board. So, I ordered 2 new 512 meg sticks of the 2700 crucial ram and RMA'd the Kingston ram. So the crucial gets here and I pop it in. It seemed to be running fine until I tried playing games.

Eve-Online would freeze the computer entirely within 10 seconds within entering the game.
Carmageddon II, a game my 450mhz pc had no trouble running, stuttered and lagged until I quit.
Morrowwind froze within 10 seconds.

I was told by someone online that it was a video card driver issue. So I downloaded the latest video card driver and had moderate success.

Eve-Online would freeze the computer entirely within 15 minutes of entering the gam.e
Carmageddon II still stuttering
Morrowwind ran okay for the minute I tested it out. I had to loan the cd to a friend who built an identical computer though so I could not text that for the 15 minutes.

Then I tried downloading the Omega 3rd party driver for the ATI video card. No luck there either.

Obviously, there is still something wrong with this computer. So I tried switching a ti4200 video card in. Eve-Online freezes, Carmageddon stutters. We get the latest Direct X, get the latest windows updates, try again. Eve Online freezes, carmageddon stutters.

Then I tried removing my ram and putting in a stick of 2100 ocz ram. No luck there either. Eve-Online freezes, carmageddon stutters.

This motherboard is flashed to the latest version. I don't know what to point my finger at at this point except for maybe a crappy motherboard? My friend who built the similar computer is having similar problems, so I doubt this is just a once in a lifetime defect. So I decided to possibly get an ABIT KT400A motherboard. I wouldn't have too much of a problem with restocking and shipping costs, except

a) I honestly don't know if this is going to work. I don't know if it is the motherboard that is messed. Could it be something else?
b) I'm coming up on the end of the time that I can return these components for money. Then I'm going to have to sell this thing off piece by piece on ebay or something.
c) If I have (2) sticks of DDR ram, what is going to happen on the kt400a? Is second stick going to be used or even recognized? I don't understand the reviews at this point.

Anybody care to offer insight?

 

[drag]

Maybe run a memory tester on it? if it comes up with errors you may be able to narrow it down quite a bit.

Aslo try to lower the specs of the RAM speeds in the bios.. Could be that the motherboard's bios sets them too agressive to begin with.

I'd try to un attatch the different extra bits of hardware you have floppy/drives/cdrom/extra stick of ram. and see if that makes a difference. I know that systematicly removing hardware helped narrow down can't boot problems, but I don't know about this.

 

[vfrex]

I believe I ran a memory test on the kingston ram and it came up fine. I assume by ram speed you mean clock speed (since I don't know how to adjust any of the other stuff like timings). It is set 1:1 with the FSB, which is 333.

 

[drag]

Well you also have latency and stuff like that. how fast does the memory refresh and stuff. Or if it's cas3.0 or cas2.5 or whatever mumbo jumbo that stuff is. That's all I ment, I didn't figure you'd overclocked anything yet,

 

[vfrex]

Would the new motherboard fix the problem?

 

[Markfw]

My first guess woul be to try setting the memory timings to cas 3 and just try it. Also, make SURE you are not using the nvidia IDE drivers, they can hose the whole machine. Reply with results.

 

[vfrex]

You lost me on the IDE driver part,,,what are they?