Detailed post ahead - bare with me
I originally had a TwinMOS 512MB (2x256MB) dual chan kit for my P4 system. It was always a bit dodgy - it would only run Memtest at CAS3. At the advertised CAS 2.5 it would throw errors in test 5 and 6. Set to CAS3 and it was perfect, so I decided to live with it as, frankly, I couldn't be bothered to go through the bother of sending it back....and there was next to no performance difference.
So now I've added another identical kit to take me up to 1GB. Ran Memtest and the new stuff started chucking errors in Test 3 (usually between 1-4 errors on most passes, and only ever on test 3). I tried all the usual things - increasing the voltage actually made it throw the odd error in test 1, so I left it at 2.7v. Tried swapping the RAM around in the slots and this either made it worse or made no difference.
So I thought I'd see how it worked in Windows, fully expecting to experience problems. However, I've performed the following tests and so far this is what I get:
Prime95 (blend) 3 hours = no errors, no warnings
Prime95 (large FFT) 1.5 hours = no errors, no warnings
3DMark01 6 loops = no errors
3DMark03 3 loops = no errors
Everquest2, 4 hours playing = no errors
So basically Windows seems 100% stable so far. Now I usually trust Memtest, but if the RAM was faulty surely it would have shown up so far? What do errors in test 3 actually mean? As it all seems to work fine I'm happy to forget about it and move on - but obviously the Memtest errors are bugging me slightly.
Comments or suggestions?
I originally had a TwinMOS 512MB (2x256MB) dual chan kit for my P4 system. It was always a bit dodgy - it would only run Memtest at CAS3. At the advertised CAS 2.5 it would throw errors in test 5 and 6. Set to CAS3 and it was perfect, so I decided to live with it as, frankly, I couldn't be bothered to go through the bother of sending it back....and there was next to no performance difference.
So now I've added another identical kit to take me up to 1GB. Ran Memtest and the new stuff started chucking errors in Test 3 (usually between 1-4 errors on most passes, and only ever on test 3). I tried all the usual things - increasing the voltage actually made it throw the odd error in test 1, so I left it at 2.7v. Tried swapping the RAM around in the slots and this either made it worse or made no difference.
So I thought I'd see how it worked in Windows, fully expecting to experience problems. However, I've performed the following tests and so far this is what I get:
Prime95 (blend) 3 hours = no errors, no warnings
Prime95 (large FFT) 1.5 hours = no errors, no warnings
3DMark01 6 loops = no errors
3DMark03 3 loops = no errors
Everquest2, 4 hours playing = no errors
So basically Windows seems 100% stable so far. Now I usually trust Memtest, but if the RAM was faulty surely it would have shown up so far? What do errors in test 3 actually mean? As it all seems to work fine I'm happy to forget about it and move on - but obviously the Memtest errors are bugging me slightly.
Comments or suggestions?