bad bios? bad board? bad something?

[SanDiego]

ok, so i blew my old 530 watt after adding my second 9800GT for sli , bought a nice zalman 750 watt w/t 80 amps on 4 12v rails, deff sufficient for my set up, but after i booted back up, it was not allocating enough resources for my second card to start, so i went back to my bios, and "loaded optimized defaults", started back up, everything was fine, went and restarted again, back to the bios, put back in my previous settings manually, got back in, and i got blue screened after 5 mins, tried a lower clock rate, no luck, only worked on the stock settings, i figured maybe my bios could use a little refresh, so i flashed my bios, still the same problem, with the overclock the first card gets an error code 12 and the second card gets code error 43, if all else fails i plan on a new mobo, ram, and cpu, i would like to put that off though, not many bills in the bank at the moment.

system spec's

mobo: Gigabyte K8N-SLI 939-pin
cpu: AMD X2 3800+ stock 2.0 (had oc'ed at 2.8ghz and stable for 12 hrs on P95)(also liquid cooled)
ram: 4x1GB Corsair XMS DDR-400
gpu: 2x 9800GT in SLI 2x1024mb 256bit both @ 8x speed (motherboard limitation)
power: Zalman 750watt

 

[englandr753]

I would pull one of those cards out and give it a rest since your cpu cant really give one of those cards enough to do. Keep it on the shelf for your new setup.

Did you reset the CMOS and start over with the settings? Flashing the BIOS doesnt necessarily reset the settings and you need to do it manually.

Check the manufacturers website for the memory to get the correct voltage and timing settings. This will cause you similar probs if not set correctly.

Run memtest 86 for at least 5 passes to see if your memory checks out ok. You could have a bad stick or all could be bad.

 

[SanDiego]

however painful, i think you are right, it must be set aside for now, yes i did reset the cmos, lil jumper on the board, i will try the voltage+timing, however those never gave me troubles, even when i had these

fsb 280
ht 3x
divider 1.33
v-core 1.45
ram 374

my memory is capable of doing 2-3-3-7 1T, the motherboard sets it manually to 3-3-3-8, should i increase the last to 9 or 10?

 

[englandr753]

I would adjust it to the settings recommended by the memory mfgr. Then run memtest 86 at least 5 passes to see if you get errors.

If no errors then run your system to see if it gets BSOD again.

 

[englandr753]

And yes, it is painful about the video card but it only makes sense to store it and not put undue wear and tear on it and have it as a backup if your card gives your problems or keep it to sli when you upgrade your system.

 

[SanDiego]

ill run memtest overnight, get back to you on if i get errors, its time for an upgrade anyway =[ i was thinking a 9950 Phenom and then i can get used to that and get overclocking it to 3.0 at least, a motherboard with higher pcie bandwidth for my cards, 4 gigs of ram (who needs 8gigs ?) and with windows 7 around the corner, it is rumored to run very well on a set up with single core 1 Ghz, and only 1GB of ram, deff beats up vista's requirements

 

[englandr753]

You can squeeze some more life out of it. It would be nice to upgrade but if you cant yet its a noteworthy system to make do with.

 

[SanDiego]

ran memtest while i slept, woke up, no errors, i think ill just make due with my system till amd releases a new slot, thanks for the suggestions