Troubleshooting KT333 system

[MrMikey]

I recently bought the following:

MSI KT3 Ultra motherboard
512MB PC2700 mushkin RAM
Athlon XP 1800+ processor
Leadtek GF4 Ti4400
430W power supply

After putting it all together, I'm having trouble running it at 133MHz FSB. It runs fine at up to 110 MHz FSB, but anything past that it has trouble loading up Windows. I've got it down to the bare bones... no network card or anything. I have a SCSI card I'm waiting to put in it, but to keep that from being a factor, I'm running a reliable IDE drive to boot from.

I've got the memory settings in the bios running off the host clock, all the timing set to the slowest possible, the AGP slot running at 1x, I've played with core voltage settings, memory voltage settings, AGP voltage settings, all to no avail.

Again, it posts fine, but once it tries to load windows 2000, I keep getting blue screens. Pop it back down to 110MHz FSB, and everything is kosher and stable. This would be fine with me, but since it's an Athlon XP, the multiplier is locked and it's only running at around 1266MHz or so at 110 FSB.

How can I determine if it is the memory, the processor, or the motherboard?

 

[YetiIronfst]

Is your FSB to memory running 1:1 or 4:5?

And is your memory timed at 2.5:3:3, 2:3:3, or 2:2:2?

Without knowing what your memory timings are, I'd guess they might be too aggressive. Set your bus to 133MHz and your CPU multiplier to whatever default is to run your CPU at spec (umm, should be an 11x multiplier to run it at 1466MHz if I did some quick math correctly based on the fact that I know a 2200+ runs at 1800MHz). Set your memory bus to 1:1 and your memory at 2.5:3:3.

If that works your CPU is fine and it's probably the memory or the way you're tring to run the memory. What's the memory rated for latency wise at PC2700 speeds? Remember - PC2700C2 memory is rated for 2:3:3 at 166MHz, not 2:2:2.

 

[MrMikey]

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't being suspicious of the memory, so your points led me in what seems to be the right direction. I called up Mushkin, and they said that their memory as had some compatibility issues with this motherboard. They are being VERY helpful... kudos to Mushkin. I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

[murphy55d]

My first thought was make sure you have it set to run at 133 and not 100... NOT in the frequency settings in the bios either.. alot of motherboards have a jumper on the board which you need to set to 133, every board I've had so far came standard at 100, so you might need to change the jumper.

 

[MrMikey]

Here's the latest word. I was on the phone with the guys from Mushkin, and they told me that they usually had trouble clocking the XP chips at lower than the rated speed. I set the FSB to 133, set the memory clock to the same, and then one other thing... in the Advanced Chipset Features/DRAM timing in the bios, we set the SDRAM interleave to 4way (I think because it was a 512MB stick). This proved to work... woohoo! So now I'm running at 266MHz for the memory, and the processor is at full speed. What a relief to finally get it going.

The last thing that remained was to get the memory clocked at 333MHz. We set the memory clock to run at FSB+33, but it wouldn't post. So Mushkin is going to send me a new stick of RAM fed-ex, should be here by Tuesday. I don't have to ship my old stick back until the new one gets here... wow.

I've never dealt with Mushkin before, but I am one satisfied customer now. Even if I never get it running at 333MHz, I'll still buy all my memory at Mushkin. Their service is just unbelievable.